Undercover Read Online Free PDF Page B

fit!’
    Harpur thought he had this name – Monthermer – and a few others somewhere in his memory, either from official documentation he and Iles had been sent as introductory material, or from the media. Because of the big significance of the killing, the events of that night, and the accident trial when it took place eight months later, had earned major space in national newspapers and on television and radio. Harpur had followed some of this journalism, although he didn’t know then, of course, that Iles and he would be sent to investigate the events and their aftermath. He imagined most police officers would have kept an eye on the Press and broadcast accounts, and especially those involved in any way with undercover work. They – he – might have absorbed some location details unaware.
    The images changed again. Maud stopped the film and put one of her celebrity circles around a man walking past a charity shop, his face away from the camera. ‘We think this is Martin Abidan, hunt-party leader and on the board of the L.P. Young outfit,’ she said. ‘The spot is the edge of Guild Square. Scray would sometimes appear in this area meeting clients, as he would, too, in the arcades and elsewhere locally.’ She restarted the footage. The man walked on. ‘Now watch this,’ she said. He seemed to slow his pace suddenly and to stare at something over on his right. He halted and continued to gaze in that direction. ‘It looks as if he’s seen Scray, doesn’t it?’ she said.
    â€˜Yes,’ Harpur said. ‘Has he?’
    â€˜You’ll remember that moment in
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
, by Stieg Larsson,’ she replied.
    â€˜Oh?’ Harpur said.
    â€˜Where the investigative reporter, searching for clues about a missing girl, finds a group photograph of her glancing off-picture at somebody or something that shocks and/or fascinates her,’ Iles said. ‘It’s a kind of revelation. Actually, the reporter comes over as thick as shit, so he needs revelations.’
    â€˜Yes, a kind of revelation here, too,’ she said.
    They watched the man she’d called Abidan step into the shallow entrance porch of a computer store. For a moment he was lost to the street camera. But another one – presumably the store’s own – picked him up in the porch, and Maud’s technicians had tacked this new sighting on to the previous frames. He was talking into a mobile. Maud kept him and his phone in another bright noose.
    Although she must have often seen this picture before, she gave it some special, priority mull now and, still seated, spoke over her left shoulder to Harpur and the Assistant Chief, not bothering to look their way because, at this moment, only the screen counted for her. Harpur knew the seeming casualness of this would infuriate Iles. During some city hall function, Harpur had once heard the ACC yell, at a police committee member who must have addressed him a bit aslant, ‘Shoulders are undoubtedly fine and crucial to the skeleton and tailoring. I’ve no quarrel with shoulders whatsoever, but conversation flung at me over them – i. fucking e., the shoulders – is quite another commodity, twat.’ He’d consider avoidance of face-to-face as insubordinate.
    But Harpur had the feeling Maud wouldn’t give a fish’s tit
how
he considered it. That cheery, greenfield face hid ironclad wilfulness, as well as the kind of possible brainpower Iles had mentioned. When she told them her mobile phone would be always open, she didn’t mean for chit-chat: it was to give updated advice, and Harpur felt the advice would actually be dogmatic orders. Perhaps it wasn’t a hick face but a centurion’s: ‘I say do this and he/they doeth it.’
    Maud told them now: ‘Abidan made two calls. Each contained the same words – “Where I am” – a prearranged rendezvous signal. In