by James, Henry
‘Doesn’t bear thinking about.’ Lowry couldn’t help but smile. Oldham’s men had obviously stumbled across Doug Young, looking for his peregrines, while trying to dispose of the drugs. Two large rucksacks of amphetamines couldn’t just be binned – they’d obviously had to have been parked in the hut, until Doug and his birds had gone. Oldham passed the cigarette case.
‘Can I be frank?’ he said, proffering a lighter.
‘Please.’
‘I must admit, I was in hot water.’ He smiled for the first time. ‘Heavens, I’d clean forgotten we’d been out on the marshes taking pot shots before Christmas – and there’s my name chalked up for all to see. Have to hand it to you chaps, how the devil did you catch on to the ranges?’
Too coy to admit to being one of those who traipsed about looking at birds, Lowry said, ‘We had a telephone number we thought might be a military field line, which put you in the frame. But if it was, it was incomplete, and the brigadier—’
‘Do you have it on you? May I?’
Lowry reached inside his suit pocket. ‘Be my guest.’
‘Thank you, and talking of the brigadier, it goes without saying he’s completely in the dark about the aforementioned situation.’ Oldham scrutinized the scrap of paper. ‘This is indeed a phone number.’
‘Oh, really? We assumed there must be a number missing at the end, but we tried every permutation and came up with nothing.’
‘There is indeed a number missing, but it’ll be in the middle – an old army trick. There should also be a zero at the front for the international code. For, correct me if I’m wrong, but this is a German phone number.’
Cowley’s contact number in Germany, of course. Less a digit, should it fall into the wrong hands – in this case, the hapless brother. The contact would be out there now, in Europe, wondering what the hell had happened. Lowry tipped what remained of his sherry down his throat. That was for someone else to worry about. He left the number with Oldham, suggesting he may wish to make inquiries, and said goodbye. Lowry knew the system well enough to know that no good would come of divulging what he’d confirmed this morning. Besides, he rather liked the captain; he was a brave and principled man. He rose. A swift trip to Colchester General to check on the wounded Kenton, then . . . then what? Jacqui wouldn’t be up until five. He was determined to have it out with her; he’d thought it through overnight. He’d been compromised, and refused to accept that sort of behaviour. And Matthew; he needed to talk to his son. That bruising . . . So, in the meantime, what? Watching the U’s run around Layer Road with Sparks? It would be a break, and maybe go some way to reassure the station chief that Lowry wasn’t losing the plot completely.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Jon Riley, Felicity Blunt, Sarah Neal, Deborah Treisman, Sarah Castleton, David Shelley, Andreas Campomar, Natasha Fairweather, Richard Arcus, Sarah Day, Penelope Price, Mike Bulmer-Jones, Steve Moore, Alan Munson, Clare Worland, James Oldham, Katie Gurbutt.
Table of Contents
Blackwater
Also By
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Epigraph
Contents
PROLOGUE
Saturday, New Year’s Day, 1983
-1-
-2-
-3-
-4-
-5-
-6-
-7-
-8-
-9-
-10-
-11-
-12-
-13-
-14-
-15-
-16-
-17-
Sunday, 2 January, 1983
-18-
-19-
-20-
-21-
Monday, 3 January, 1983
-22-
-23-
-24-
-25-
-26-
-27-
-28-
-29-
-30-
-31-
-32-
-33-
-34-
-35-
-36-
Tuesday, 4 January, 1983
-37-
-38-
-39-
-40-
-41-
-42-
Wednesday, 5 January, 1983
-43-
-44-
-45-
-46-
-47-
-48-
-49-
-50-
-51-
Thursday, 6 January, 1983
-52-
-53-
-54-
-55-
-56-
-57-
-58-
Friday, 7 January, 1983
-59-
-60-
Acknowledgements
