Whispers Under Ground

times to make sure it was secure and as I did so my fingers brushed something that shouldn’t have been there. It was roughly the same size and shape as the tracker.
    ‘I don’t see why we can’t get today’s stuff from Coates and Son,’ said Kevin on other side of the van. ‘Danny says they’re giving it away.’
    I pulled the second object out – it was another tracker. It was even, as far as I could tell in the dark, the same make as mine. I balled it in my fist and walked away – quickly.
    ‘Of course they’re giving it away,’ Kevin’s probable brother’s voice receded behind me. ‘They’re being checked.’
    Was someone else running an operation on the Nolans? The Inside Inquiry Team had done a pool check on Kevin Nolan and his family the day before and any police operation would have been flagged. Could it be MI5? Were the Nolans part of some dissident Republican active service unit or part of a supply chain for the same – or informers against? Had Agent Reynolds been right – did the murder actually have an Irish component?
    I ducked out of sight behind a truck that was waiting to be loaded.
    No, I thought, it still would have been flagged. Not least because DCI Seawoll was one of the most respected and formidable officers in the Met and you’d have to be remarkably stupid to try and do an end run around him.
    I got out my torch and examined the tracker, which was identical in every way to mine and probably bought from the same online catalogue. Unless I wanted to open it up, it was about as traceable as a ballpoint pen. I took out my keys and scratched a tiny X into the casing in between the attachment magnets, took a deep breath to calm my nerves and strolled back towards Kevin Nolan’s crap Transit van.
    I had to put it back where I found it but I couldn’t leave my tracker next to it, or whoever had planted the first tracker might find mine if they came to retrieve theirs. I couldn’t hear any voices as I reached the van. I hoped this meant they were all inside the lock-up. I bent down, replaced the tracker where I’d found it, removed mine and was just heading for the back of the van when the rear doors crashed open.
    ‘You need to clean this fucking van.’ It was Kevin’s probable brother. I froze, which was about the most stupidly suspicious-looking thing I could do, and the van rocked as someone climbed inside. ‘No wonder they’re not happy. Pass me the broom.’
    ‘It’s not the van,’ said Kevin from the back. ‘They think they should be getting more.’
    ‘They get what they pay for,’ said the voice. ‘I didn’t make the stupid deal.’
    It’s always a risk when you have a plan that you fixate on it even when things go pear-shaped. I realised that because my plan had been to stick my tracker under the back of the van. I was actually waiting for Kevin and his friend to leave so I could do so – risking discovery the whole time. How stupid is that?
    The van rocked rhythmically and I heard god-knows-what being swept out of the back. ‘I thought Franny’s was closed down,’ said Kevin.
    I crouched down and put the tracker ahead of the front wheel arch and nonchalantly walked away. It wasn’t as good or secure a position as the back or the mid-section, but the magnets on those things are much better than they used to be.
    We’d picked our position on the fourth floor of the car park with care. From there me and Lesley could have set up our camera with the telephoto lens on a tripod and had a direct line of sight on Nolan and Sons – had we only been willing to freeze to death or indeed had remembered to bring the tripod. The Asbo was conspicuously the only car in its row with the engine running.
    ‘Sorted?’ asked Lesley as I climbed gratefully into the warm interior.
    ‘Not exactly,’ I said and told her about the second tracker.
    I fished out the thermos flask, yet another Folly antique, a khaki cylinder the size of a shell casing, and poured myself a coffee. Lesley was equally sceptical about us being tracked by CTC, but for different reasons.
    ‘They don’t need to track us. If they want to know something they’d just phone us up and ask. And if MI5 wanted to know something they’d just call CTC who would call us and ask,’ she said. ‘I think it’s the FBI.’
    ‘All the FBI has to do is ask Kittredge and he’d ask us,’ I said.
    ‘But we might not tell Kittredge,’ said Lesley. ‘Not to mention we know Agent Reynolds bent the rules