The Last Temptation

It wasn’t Gary who answered the door this time. The man on the doorstep had the bulky upper torso of a weightlifter. His reddish hair was cropped close to his head and the glare from his prominent pale blue eyes was unnerving. ‘Yeah? What do you want?’ he asked belligerently.

‘I’m looking for Gary,’ she said. Her nerves were buzzing again. He didn’t look like a cop, but what if this was another trap?

He pursed his lips then shouted over his shoulder. ‘Gary, you expecting some bird?’

A muffled, ‘Yeah, let her in,’ came from the room she’d been in earlier.

The weightlifter stepped back, opening the door wide. There was nothing in the hall to make her uneasy, so Carol stifled her doubts and walked in. He stepped neatly behind her and slammed the door shut.

It was obviously a signal. Three men stepped out from the doorways leading off the hall. ‘Police, stay where you are,’ the one who had opened the door shouted.

‘What the fuck?’ she managed to get out before they were on her. Hands seized her and half-pushed, half-dragged her into the living room. One of them made a grab for her bag. She clung on grimly, trying for the appearance of indignant innocence. ‘Get your hands off me,’ she shouted.

They pushed her on to the sofa. ‘What’s your name?’ the weightlifter demanded.

‘Karen Barstow,’ she said, using the cover name she’d been given in the brief.

‘Right then, Karen. What’s your business with Gary?’

She tried for bewildered. ‘Look, what is this? How do I know you’re the Old Bill?’

He pulled a wallet out of the pocket of his jogging trousers and flashed a warrant card at her too fast for her to take in a name. But it was the real thing, she knew that. ‘Satisfied?’

She nodded. ‘I still don’t get it. What’s going on? Why are you picking on me?’

‘Don’t play the innocent. We know you’re one of Gary’s mules. You’ve been carrying drugs for him. We know the score.’

‘That’s bullshit. I just came round to give him his winnings. I don’t know nothing about no drugs,’ she said defiantly. She thrust her bag at him, relieved she’d ditched the CS gas. ‘Look. Go on. There’s fuck all in there.’

He took the bag and unceremoniously dumped the contents on the floor. He went straight for the envelope and ripped it open. He riffled the bundle of notes with his thumb. ‘There must be a couple of grand here,’ he said.

‘I don’t know. I didn’t look. You won’t find my prints on a single one of them notes. All I know is that my mate Linda asked me to drop off Gary’s winnings.’

‘It must have been a helluva bet,’ one of the other officers said, leaning indolently against the wall.

‘I don’t know anything about that. You gotta believe me, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t even do drugs, never mind dealing them.’

‘Who said anything about dealing?’ the weightlifter asked, shoving the money back into the envelope.

‘Dealing, running, whatever. I don’t have nothing to do with that. I swear on my mother’s grave. All I was doing was bringing Gary his winnings.’ She was confident now. They had nothing on her. Nobody had seen her hand over the drugs to her contact, she was clear on that.

‘Gary says he sent you off with a parcel of drugs this morning,’ the weightlifter said.

‘I don’t know why he’d say that, because it’s not true.’ She was almost sure what he was saying was a bluff. All she had to do was stick to her story. Let them come to her with anything concrete.

‘You went out with the drugs and you were due to come back with the money. And here you are with an envelope full of readies.’

She shrugged. ‘I told you, it’s his winnings from the horses. I don’t care what lies Gary’s told you, that’s the truth and you can’t prove any different.’

‘Let’s see about that, shall we? A little trip down to the station, get a female officer to give you the full body search and see if you’re as keen on your bullshit then.’

Carol almost smiled. At least she was on firmer ground here. She knew her rights. ‘I’m not going nowhere with you pigs unless you arrest me. And if you arrest me, I’m saying bugger all until I get to see my lawyer.’

The weightlifter glanced around at his colleagues. That was all she needed to see. They didn’t have anything on her. They had been lying about what Gary had said, because if he really had thrown her to the wolves, it would be enough to arrest her on suspicion. She got to her feet. ‘So, what’s it to be? Are you going to arrest me, or am I going to walk out that door? With Gary’s money, by the way, because you’ve got no right to that.’ She crouched down and started scooping her possessions back into her bag.

Before anyone could respond, the door opened and Morgan stepped into the room. ‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I appreciate your help. But I’ll take it from here.’

The weightlifter looked as if he wanted to protest, but one of his colleagues put a restraining hand on his arm. The four who had confronted Carol filed out of the door. On his way out, the one who had been lounging against the wall turned back. ‘For the record, sir, we’re not best pleased with the way this has gone.’

‘Noted,’ Morgan said curtly. He winked at Carol and held a finger to his lips till they heard the front door close behind them. Then he smiled. ‘You have really pissed off the Drugs Squad,’ he said.

‘I have?’

‘That was a real deal that went down out there,’ he said, crossing to the sofa and sitting down. ‘The Drugs Squad’s intention was to pick up the bloke you sold the drugs to. You were supposed to have a fairly hairy time but be given the opportunity to escape. Unfortunately, you didn’t play it the way we were all expecting you to. And chummy walked away with a parcel of drugs that was supposed to be back in our hands by bedtime.’

Carol swallowed hard. This was exactly the kind of fuck-up she’d wanted to avoid. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

Morgan shrugged. ‘Don’t be. Somebody should have had the wit to cover the emergency exit. You, on the other hand, exhibited initiative under pressure. You acted in character throughout. You dealt with those two bruisers from the NCIS football hooligan squad with intelligence and style, you did everything you could to cover your tracks and change your appearance, and you outsmarted the opposition right along the line. We couldn’t have asked for a better display of your talents, DCI Jordan.’

Carol stood up a little straighter. ‘Thank you, sir. So, do I get the job?’

A shadow crossed Morgan’s normally open features. ‘Oh yes, you get the job.’ He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and fished out a card. ‘My office, tomorrow morning. We’ll give you the full brief then. Right now, I’d suggest you go home and make whatever arrangements are necessary to cover your absence. You’ll be going away for a while. And you won’t be able to go home again until the job’s done.’

Carol frowned. ‘I’m not going to Europol?’

‘Not just yet.’ He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. ‘Carol, you get this assignment right, and you can more or less write your own ticket.’

She noted the use of her first name. In her experience, senior officers outside your own team only ever got that informal when the shit was heading for the fan and they hoped you’d be the one standing between it and them. ‘And if I get it wrong?’

Morgan shook his head. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

13 (#ulink_04565576-4443-5c16-8f6a-87ce501e740e)

There was never any shortage of work for idle hands on board the Wilhelmina Rosen. The old man had set the standard, and he was determined not to fall below it. The crew clearly thought he was obsessive, but he didn’t care. What was the point in having one of the most beautiful Rhineships on the water if you didn’t maintain it to the highest standard? You might as well be piloting one of the modern steel boxes that had as much personality as a cornflake packet.

Tonight, his task was to restore the brasswork on the bridge to its gleaming patina. He’d been understandably preoccupied with his personal plans, but that morning he’d noticed that it had begun to grow dull. So he’d decided to spend the evening with a bundle of rags and a tin of brass polish, determined to nip his slipshod ways in the bud before they became a new habit.

Inevitably, his mind slipped sideways from the repetitious task to the closer concerns of his heart. Tomorrow, they would be heading back down the Rhine, towards the place where all this had begun. Schloss Hochenstein, standing high on a bluff upriver from Bingen, its gothic windows glaring down on the turbulent waters of the Rhine gorge, its grey stone as forbidding as a thundercloud, the legacy of some almost-forgotten medieval robber baron. For years, the Wilhelmina Rosen had motored up and down this stretch of river, his grandfather at the helm never betraying by so much as a sideways glance that the schloss meant anything to him.

Perhaps if it had been situated in a less demanding stretch of water his studied avoidance of so prominent a landmark would have taken on its own significance. In the Rhine gorge, however, skippers had to concentrate every ounce of their attention on the water. It had always been a severe test of the skills of boatmen, with its sharp twists, its rock-studded banks, its unexpected eddies and whirlpools and the very speed of its flow. These days, it was easier because deep channels had been dug and dredged to control the capricious movement of the water. But it still remained a stretch of water where a tourist making a single trip would have stronger memories of the surrounding scenery than a Rhineship skipper who had made the transit a hundred times. And so he had never noticed his grandfather’s stubborn refusal to let his eyes range over the prospect of Schloss Hochenstein.