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was booked on the six o’clock flight up to Newcastle. There, the former MP would slide into his pale green Bentley and take off to his country house. This was the fifth Friday night that Ward 13 had followed him. They knew his movements.
    Tristie was in a poky hotel room almost three hundred miles away. Just a couple of hundred yards from Newcastle airport, in fact. Fretting. Thinking of all the things that could go wrong. And Piglet, recruit number two . . . he had the best gig. Waiting for a call in a distant beach bar on the north side of Grand Cayman. Probably looking out over a marina full of yachts and launches, and young, sleek women and old, grumpy men. Scrunching the warm sand through his toes, no doubt. Bastard.
    Getting the money was down to Ferret and Tristie. Simple as that. There was an open mobile link between them. Ferret was in her left ear, both of them wearing hands-free phones. She checked her watch. A couple of minutes before 5.30 p.m. The flight was on time. Within the next ten minutes they’d be nudging their VVIP clients to the gate. It was now or never. The tension was tight in Tristie’s chest. In fifteen minutes she was either going to look very smart or impossibly stupid, with the prospect of a lot of police forever on her tail.
    She thought about Sir Dale Malham in the pages of Horse & Hound , at a celebrity clay pigeon shoot with his brand-new, lovely little 20-bore Purdey over-and-under. How long can you pretend there’s nothing wrong with this situation? Then she thought about the appalling grot, the stench of that bathroom at Tidworth barracks. The contrast was just what Tristie needed to steel her nerves. When exactly are you going to stop turning the other cheek?
    ‘Ferret. What are you looking at?’
    ‘Biggest titties I ever saw.’ This is the downside of giving expensive surveillance equipment to former soldiers. Unsupervised.
    ‘Don’t go all horn-dog on me now.’
    ‘Hey.’ Sound of indignation from Ferret. ‘I’m just watching what Malham’s watching. Being as one with the target.’
    In the Heathrow lounge, Ferret was wearing a pair of wholly unremarkable glasses, except for the small button camera fitted into the frame just by the bridge of his nose. The image generated, the girl with big breasts, would be playing in the palm of his hand on a digital video recorder no bigger than a credit card. The same image was also being stored on a secure digital card.
    ‘You’re close enough to Malham?’ There was no zoom function on the spy camera; you only achieved that effect by physically getting closer to the target. ‘You’ve got him framed tight enough?’
    ‘Don’t worry.’ Ferret’s voice was reassuringly breezy. ‘He looks plenty good from here. Distracted by them big bazoomers.’
    ‘That’s why God gave ‘em to us. To bewitch and befuddle.’
    ‘We’re going to get this guy. Turn him upside down and shake him for all he is worth.’
    Ferret was right. Focus. Get a grip, girl. Tristie looked down at the small, boxy worktable in her three-star hotel room near Newcastle airport. The files were all tidied away. The phones were ready. She had hands-free connections in both ears. The paperwork was laid out. She was in control. Was never going to be more ready . . .
    ‘OK. Sir Dale Malham. Come on down .’
    *

    Tristie Merritt dialled Malham’s mobile number from the hotel phone. And the first response was from Ferret, watching him in the lounge. Putting down his drink, spilling a few nuts on to the couch. Fumbling through his jacket pockets. ‘ I hope that’s you calling, ‘cos he’s looking for his phone. ’
    ‘Is me. Stand by.’
    ‘ Got the phone in his hand. Looking at the number on his screen. Confused . . .’ Malham’s screen would show the number 0191-214 . . . enough for him to know the call came from north-east Newcastle. Somewhere within a triangle of land between Ponteland, Throckley and Kingston Park that also included the airport. A lot