Portsmouth.
Yates wanted a cigarette but the Rover was a smoke-free zone. His boss was a stickler for it and no amount of air-freshener would get rid of the smell. He made do with a stick of foul-tasting nicotine gum.
He ran his hands round the steering-wheel, enjoying the feel of the leather. As soft as a young woman's skin, he thought. Not that he'd touched many young women over the past few years, but all that would change soon. He'd quit his job, sell the flat, and move to the Philippines. He'd heard great things about the Philippines. How a man could live like a king, even on a government pension. How the women were soft, pretty, accommodating . . . and available. Yates's smile widened: he'd be arriving in the Philippines with more than his pension.
He stretched out his arms and arched his back. The Rover still smelt new. It was less than six months old and had done only three thousand miles. Ray Mackie didn't travel much - the car was more of a status symbol than anything else. A badge of office to show that he'd climbed the slippery pole and was now master of all he surveyed. Head of Drugs Operations. Mackie would be retiring with a real pension, thought Yates bitterly, and he earned real money. Not the pittance that HM Customs paid him.
Yates reached out and touched the gleaming wooden veneer around the car's instruments. Real craftsmanship, he thought.
A car pulled up behind the Rover. It was a BMW, a nice motor, the five series, thought Yates, but it didn't have the quality of the Rover. The BMW was a car to drive but the Rover was a car to be driven in. It was a crucial difference. Long before he'd become a professional driver, Yates had been a car salesman and had spent a year selling Rolls-Royces in a Mayfair showroom. He'd always been able to spot a serious buyer because they'd get into the back of the car, not the front.
Yates watched the BMW in his rear-view mirror. The headlights flashed. Yates frowned. Normally they came to him. He twisted in his seat. The men stayed in the BMW. He frowned. What the hell were they playing at? He switched off the engine and climbed out. The BMW's headlights flashed again.
Yates walked to the driver's side. The window wound down and Pat Neary grinned up at him. 'Stan the man,' he said.
'What's going on?' asked Yates. 'I'm not supposed to see you until next week.'
'Change of plan,' said Neary.
'There's no plan to change,' said Yates. 'I give you information on HODO's movements, you give me a brown envelope.'
'Our boss wants a word,' said Neary.
Kim Fletcher was in the passenger seat. He grinned. 'He'll make it worth your while, Stan.'
Yates looked up and down the road. There were headlights about a mile away but the car turned off to the left. 'What does he want to talk about?'
'He wants to pick your brains.'
'About what?'
'That's why he wants to see you, Stan. Says he doesn't want to work through me on this.'
Yates licked his lips. 'How much?'
'Didn't want to tell me, Stan, but he said he'd make it worth your while.' Fletcher sighed. 'Look, if you're not interested just tell me and I'll pass the message on.'
'I'm not saying I'm not interested,' said Yates hastily. 'It's just I've always worked with you.'
'And I work for him,' said Fletcher. 'It's his money you're salting away.'
Yates thought about it. 'Where?'
'He's waiting for you, not far away. Follow us in your motor, okay?'
Yates went back to his car, spat out his chewing gum, climbed in and started the engine.
The BMW flashed its headlights, then pulled out and drove on. Yates followed at a safe distance. His mouth was dry and he wanted a drink. Yates never drank while driving. In his twenty-seven years at the wheel he'd never so much as touched a glass of shandy while he was working. But as he followed the BMW through the darkness, he wanted a whiskey, badly. And he wanted a cigarette.
The promise of extra money was tempting, but Yates wasn't sure if he really wanted to meet Fletcher's boss. Fletcher had approached him two years earlier as Yates was sitting in a bar round the corner from his bedsit. Yates didn't like being at home: it felt too much like a prison cell. Six paces long, three paces wide, a single bed, a cheap chest of drawers and a wardrobe with a loose door, a microwave oven on a rickety table and a cramped shower room with a leaking toilet. Looking back, it had been a slow courtship. The occasional drink. A late-night curry. Fletcher listened to his complaints about his ex-wife, his job, his boss. Fletcher had always seemed interested in Mackie, who he was and whom he met. Then one night Fletcher slipped him an envelope containing five hundred pounds. It was a gift, Fletcher had said, just to help him out. Yates had taken it. That night Fletcher had asked some specific questions about Mackie. Where he lived. What car his wife drove. Yates had answered without hesitation. He'd had a few drinks, but it wasn't the alcohol that had loosened his tongue. It was the resentment. At the way his life had gone down the toilet. At his wife for stealing his children. At Mackie for lording it over him, treating him like shit.
The meetings with Fletcher had become less social: weekly debriefings, then a brown envelope full of cash. After six months Yates had asked for a rise and Fletcher gave him a thousand pounds a week. Pat Neary had started to attend the debriefing sessions. But Fletcher made demands, too. Specific questions about Mackie. Who he met. Where he went. Then, after another year, Fletcher had asked him to take the Rover to a garage in Shepherd's Bush in west London. It was a tiny place under a railway arch. A mechanic had fitted tiny microphones into the rear of the car and a micro tape deck in the glove compartment. The money went up to two thousand pounds a week and Yates had to hand over a bag of tapes at his weekly debriefings. There were no more late-night curries, no chatty drinking sessions, just a straightforward trade. Information on HODO for money. Lots of money. Yates felt no guilt, no shame. The way he looked at it, if his wife hadn't dumped him and run off with her fancy-man solicitor, if Mackie had treated him better, maybe he wouldn't have had to do what he'd done. But he'd made his bed and was quite happy to lie in it. Especially if that bed was a king-size in the Philippines with two beautiful young girls. Maybe three.
The BMW indicated a right turn. Yates indicated, too, even though there was nothing behind him. Yates had never asked what Fletcher and Neary were doing with the tapes and the information he gave them. He hadn't cared. Fletcher and Neary hadn't seemed over-bright and Yates had always assumed they were working for someone else. He popped a fresh piece of nicotine gum into his mouth and grimaced at the taste. He'd been meaning to switch to patches but kept forgetting to visit the chemist.
The BMW turned down a rutted track. Yates cursed as the Rover hit a pothole and mud splashed over the door. Mackie insisted that the car was always in pristine condition so he'd have to be up early in the morning, washing and polishing. The Rover's headlights picked out a wooden sign with faded paintwork. It was a limestone quarry. Yates was annoyed at the cloak-and-dagger. The meeting could just as easily have taken place in a pub.
The track curved to the right and Yates lost sight of the BMW. He flicked his headlights to main beam and huge tunnels of light carved through the night sky. Ahead he saw huge metal sheds with corrugated-iron roofs and two silos with conveyor belts running up to the top. The road curved back to the left and Yates saw the BMW. It was parked in front of a metal-mesh fence. Yates frowned. The gate into the quarry was padlocked and there was no other vehicle to be seen.
He brought the Rover to a halt and sat there, chewing slowly. Fletcher climbed out of the BMW and walked towards him, his hands in his coat pockets. Yates wound down the window. 'Where is he, then?' he asked.
'Pat's calling him on the mobile,' said Fletcher.
'What's the story?'
'He's a bit wary of being seen, that's all. Come on, stretch your legs.'
Yates climbed out of the Rover. Fletcher took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Silk Cut. He offered it to Yates. Yates was going to decline, then changed his mind. He spat out his gum and took a cigarette. He shielded it from the wind with his cupped hands while Fletcher lit it for him.
Neary got out of the BMW and leaned against it, his hands in his pockets.
'How much is he going to give me, your boss?'
'Don't worry, he'll take care of you,' said Fletcher.
Yates shivered. 'I'm going to the Philippines,' he said. 'Fed up with this weather. Fed up with the whole
