Hunter Killer - Alex King Series 12 (2021), A BATEMAN [urban books to read TXT] 📗

a crisis, a good sense of humour and as tough as nails.” She glanced at the French counter-terrorist captain and saw him nodding approvingly.

“You have, what is the term, friction with Sally-Anne Thorpe?”

Caroline shook her head. “I don’t like to be policed. What we do is by its very nature, a bit of a grey area in a world of black and white.” She paused, looking back at Noventa. “Ramsay brought her in for her investigation skills. She was a top murder detective, apparently. While I appreciate her expertise, our remit differs from what the Security Service is both widely seen and believed to do.”

“A hammer to crack a walnut…” Durand interrupted. “I get it. I deal with ISIS and other Islamic extremists, endemic to France.” He shrugged. “My heavy-handed techniques got results, but put it this way, I did not volunteer for this posting. In France, too, there is seen by politicians the need to finesse when really, as I say, a hammer gets the job done.”

Caroline smiled. She thought Durand had much in common with her, and she thought King might agree as well. The thought of his absence saddened her, and she turned her attention back to Noventa and Big Dave at the Café du Lac. She hated not knowing where King was or if he was even safe. He was on his own and there was nobody to have his back.

“Are you carrying?” she asked, not taking her eyes off the subject.

Durand hesitated, then shrugged and said, “Yes.”

“What?”

“A Glock Nineteen.”

“Where did you get that?”

“I have contacts. Getting a pistol in Europe is easy.”

“Give it to me,” she said uncompromisingly.

“And if I say no?”

“Then I’ll take it from you.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

“Then just try saying, no…”

Durand shook his head in exasperation and pulled the weapon from his jacket pocket and handed it to her. “It’s loaded…”

“Not much good to anyone empty,” she said, but taking nothing on face value she pressed the release button and ejected the magazine. She pulled back the slide, caught the ejected bullet and pressed the lever to hold the slide backwards while she inspected the breech and set about reloading the magazine with the loose round. “I’ll look after it,” she assured him, as she inserted the magazine and dropped the slide forward. The weapon was ready, and she tucked it into her shoulder bag and opened the door.

“What the hell?” Durand glared at her. “You are only here because you wore me down! I agreed to the Security Service taking part in the surveillance and moved the goal posts for you, and now you are moving them again! We are only meant to observe!”

“So, observe…” she replied, getting out stiffly. She had brought along just one crutch and had been pushing herself at that, but she looked at it on the back seat and decided to leave it. She shouldered the leather bag, checked the catch was open and there was easy access to the pistol, then bent down, looking back inside the vehicle as she said, “I’m not playing Neil Ramsay’s games and making this a tech-based, internet-heavy investigation. By the time we get to play this idiot, he could already have a contract in place.”

“He will have worked out a code word, something to alert Fortez. You could blow this completely…” Durand said earnestly, but his protests were drowned out when she slammed the door behind her.

Caroline limped across the road, wishing she had used the crutch by the time she was halfway across. When she reached the pavement, just a few steps from the café, she paused to regain her composure and take a breath. The pain in her right leg was excruciating, and ever since she had left her home in Dorset, she had been taking painkillers as if they were sweets. She had three pins in her leg and all of them told her she was pushing herself beyond her limits.

***

“What the hell is she doing!” Thorpe exclaimed as she saw Caroline come into her field of view on the laptop screen.

“Her job,” Ramsay replied.

“Her job was to observe!”

“Then I suppose she changed the parameters…”

“For god’s sake…” Thorpe shook her head and said in dismay, “She’s a loose cannon, just like that King character. No wonder you’re getting flack for this team…”

“You’re a damned good investigator, Sally-Anne. You got us here. You found out more about Milo Noventa and his whereabouts than anybody I know could have. And you did it in record time.” He paused, but kept his eyes firmly on the laptop screen. “But Caroline Darby is good at this sort of thing. Yes, she’s a giant pain in the arse sometimes, but she can adapt and improvise like nobody else can. So, let’s just sit back and see where it takes us…”

***

Caroline caught the waiter’s eye as she approached, rather unsteadily, and asked for a double espresso, and another for her friend, pointing at Milo Noventa who was thoroughly immersed in an article in his paper.

She walked around the table and sat down opposite him, catching Big Dave’s look of surprise as the big man glanced her way. “I’d like to say you’re a difficult man to find, but I’d be lying,” she said.

“Who the hell are you?” Noventa asked bemused. He then looked at the waiter who placed two espressos on the linen tablecloth, along with more sugar and two cat’s tongue biscuits. “No, I…”

“Relax,” Caroline interrupted. “I ordered this.” She dropped a brown sugar cube into her double espresso and stirred deliberately with a tiny silver spoon. “I use the dark web a great deal and I peel the layers from the onion,” she said. “Just like you. But I also employ a technical genius who not only found this job for me but found the