SIXTY

Even Donna agreed Harry had to do it. This was a chance to end the uncertainty: to nail the one among the original fifteen members of Operation Clean Sheet guilty of murder — in the past and the present; to look him in the face and to know he would pay for what he had done — then and now. This was a chance Harry had realized at once he was bound to take.

So it was that Tuesday morning found him sharing the cramped rear of an unmarked white Transit van parked on the western side of Blythswood Square, Glasgow, with a battery of electronic surveillance equipment and an overweight, shaven-headed technical expert overly fond of Danish pastries called Dylan.

'Sure you don't want one?' Dylan enquired, wafting a cinnamon-scented bagful in Harry's direction.

'Sure, thanks.'

'Have you had any breakfast?'

'Just coffee. It was, er… an early start.'

That was something of an understatement. Accommodated overnight in the Milngavie Travel Inn on the northern outskirts of the city, Harry had been woken at dawn by one of Knox's junior officers and transported to Strathclyde Police HQ for final briefing and microphone-fitting. Handily, Blythswood Square lay close by. In the quadrangle at its centre, trees and bushes shaded a circular path round a flower-bedded lawn, with benches spaced at intervals. The square was overlooked by elegant Georgian buildings mostly occupied by the offices of solicitors, recruitment consultants and financial advisers. One of those offices had been temporarily converted into Knox's observation post. Policemen in white-collar-worker disguise were on patrol around the square as eight o'clock approached, while Dylan shuffled a pack of CCTV images on his monitor screen and chomped remorselessly through his supply of Danishes. 'You should still have had breakfast,' he said, inadvertently spitting a pastry flake onto Harry's shoulder. 'It's the most important meal of the day.'

'I had a fry-up yesterday morning. Plus porridge.'

'I bet your day went all the better for it.'

'Oh, definitely. Found some poor bloke shot dead in his garage. Got taken prisoner by his killer. Narrowly avoided a similar fate myself. Witnessed a couple more fatal shootings. Assisted the local constabulary with their enquiries. Hung around hospital corridors waiting for news of a critically ill friend. Volunteered to take part in a police stake-out. Then … I got an early night. It was a breeze.'

'You're a dry one, aren't you?' Dylan grinned, which was not a pretty sight. 'How's the friend?'

'Still critical.'

'Not so bad, then.'

'As what?'

'As dead.' Dylan swallowed the final mouthful of his latest Danish and squinted at the screen with sudden intensity. 'Hold up… No, I don't think so. Too young. And… he's moving on.'

'What time is it?'

'Seven to eight. Won't be long now. Where are they treating him, then?'

'Who?'

'Your friend.'

'Western General. Here in Glasgow.'

'Oh dear. Western General.'

'What's the matter?'

'My uncle went in there a few months back for a hip replacement. Caught some super-bug the minute his bum touched the mattress. He's in the cemetery now. A real waste.'

'Sorry to hear that.'

'Don't be. He was a miserable old sod.'

'I thought you just said what a waste it was.'

'Aye. Of a brand-new artificial hip.' Dylan squinted at the screen again. 'Hold up. I think… we might be in business. Take a look.' He made as much room for Harry as his bulk allowed, which in the confines of the van was not a lot.

A blurred and flickering black-and-white picture of the centre of the square, captured from a camera mounted on one of the surrounding buildings, presented itself to Harry's view. A couple of people were moving across the square, using it as a short-cut to their places of work, but there were two stationary figures, one seated on a bench, reading a newspaper, the other bending over something at the side of the path. The picture was far too fuzzy for any details of clothing or appearance to emerge. But it was only a few minutes short of eight o'clock. Harry supposed they both had to be candidates.

Not so, according to Dylan. 'Forget the stooper. He's a down-and-out doing the rounds of the bins. See?' The bending man straightened up and shuffled away, revealing the bin that had been the object of his attentions. 'Clock the guy on the bench.'

'He's just reading a paper.'

'Maybe.'

'Plus I don't recognize him.'

'You'd be hard put to recognize your own mother on one of these. I've told 'em we need to upgrade the technology for this kind of work, but the only upgrades they're interested in are to Chief Super and beyond. Cheapskates, the lot of them.'

'Can't you try some of the other cameras?'

'It won't help.' Views of the same scene from several different but equally distant and unilluminating angles flashed across the screen. 'See what I mean?'

Harry peered more closely at the blurred figure on the bench. He had lain awake for an hour or more in his Travel Inn bed the night before, trying to decide who Frank's paymaster was. The process of elimination led in only one direction every time. Of those still alive, Babcock was as good as dead in an Australian nursing home and had never been capable of killing anything larger than a wasp anyway. Nor had Fripp and Gregson. That left Judd, Tancred and Wiseman. But Judd was out of the country and Wiseman had nearly died in the car crash that had killed Lloyd. Logically, it had to be Tancred.

But was it Tancred he could see on the screen, sitting idly on the bench, newspaper open before him, clothes a smear of pale grey, head a smudge of a darker shade? It might be. It could be. It should be. But was it?

'It's eight on the button,' said Dylan. 'And he's not moving. QED, he's waiting.'

'I can't say for sure if I know him.'

'No choice, then. You'd better take a closer look.'

'Yes. I suppose so.'

Dylan switched on the van's link to the observation post and spoke into a microphone. 'No ID on Bench Man from here, people, so our boy's going for a stroll in the park. Pin back your ears and prise open your eyelids. It's movie time.'

—«»—«»—«»—

It was nearly over, Harry told himself as he clambered from the van and Dylan pulled the doors gently shut behind him. The end was close. Donna's flight would be landing at Glasgow Airport in a quarter of an hour or so. They would soon be together again. When they had parted twelve days ago, Operation Clean Sheet had been no more than an obscure and forgotten episode in Harry's misspent and undistinguished youth. In many ways, he wished it still was. But wishing was not the same as forgetting. It lacked the power to deceive. Reality was the chill, bright, gusty morning through which he walked, waiting for the traffic to thin, before he crossed the road and entered the park.

Ahead he saw the figure on the bench. Knox had insisted he wear a baseball cap to strengthen his chances of reaching the subject before being recognized. As it was, the man he was heading towards was not looking in his direction at all, but was studying his newspaper with apparent concentration, his face masked by its open pages, the crown of a trilby or the like visible above them. He was dressed in a light mac, dark suit and gleamingly polished black shoes. There was a briefcase beside him, propped against his thigh. The newspaper's pinkish colour revealed it to be the Financial Times. All in all, the man looked like a dapper, slightly old-fashioned banker or stockbroker.

Then, when Harry was about halfway along the path towards him, the man turned to another page, folding the paper briefly shut as he did so. Still he did not notice Harry, but in that instant there could be no mistaking who he was.

'My God,' Harry murmured, wondering if the hidden microphone would catch his words. 'It's you.'