‘I think you’re on the take,’ was a non-starter.
‘So, it’s your bag, DI Campbell,’ she said. She emphasised the ‘your’ as if there were some doubt about it, as if they were in, say, a railway station or a café rather than in the middle of nowhere. It sounded horribly lame. The moment that she said it, she wished she hadn’t.
He was now fully clothed and almost literally shaking with rage. She watched his face redden; it happened from the base of his neck upwards like mercury rising in a thermometer. His normally pale face was flushed and she didn’t think it was from exertion.
‘Of course, it’s my bag, as well you know, since you followed me up here.’
She started to speak and he silenced her with a chopping motion of his hand.
‘And don’t try and lie. I’ve known that someone was behind me for the past couple of miles. I didn’t imagine it would be you, of all people.’ He threw the tree branch angrily aside. Hanlon mentally breathed a sigh of relief.
‘How did you know someone was following you?’ she couldn’t help but ask. She was genuinely curious.
‘What?’
‘I really am curious,’ she said. Hanlon’s natural self-confidence was beginning to reassert itself. Campbell shook his head in disbelief.
‘If you must know, since you startled those pheasants… and then the stone chats,’ he said. Hanlon raised her eyebrows, impressed by Campbell’s impressive country tracking skills. ‘But we’re not here to discuss the birds of the west coast, DCI Hanlon. It’s your behaviour that concerns me. Oh, and I spoke to my sister, you’ve been stalking her too! What the fuck are you up to? Why have you got this hard-on for me and my family? Presumably you’ve been camped out on the hill staking out my granny’s house.’
She looked into his green eyes, which seemed to have changed their colour to a kind of hostile emerald.
‘Are you insane?’ he demanded. ‘I’d heard about you. I made enquiries, people said you were a bit nuts. I can see now that was very much an understatement.’
‘It was a training exercise,’ she said.
‘WHAT?’ he practically shouted the word.
‘I’ll be frank with you, DI Campbell,’ she said. ‘Mind if I sit down?’
She indicated the boulder set in the mossy ground. She was playing for time, her mind whirling to come up with a halfway credible explanation for her behaviour.
‘By all means…’ he said.
‘I promise I’ll tell you the whole truth,’ she lied, looking into his green eyes with great sincerity.
She sat down and looked up at him. ‘As you probably know, I am suspended pending the completion of an investigation by the IOPC. I think in a fortnight’s time I am going to be asked to leave the police. Now, DI Campbell, just how many openings are there for a forty-year-old woman detective with, I freely admit, limited people skills?’
Campbell didn’t reply, but she felt that he was falling for her explanation, which had the merit of being based in truth. So far, she was just giving voice to what was in her head. It felt good to admit it. He looked at her, his face impassive; it was impossible to know what he was thinking.
‘Very few,’ she said, answering her own question. ‘The security business being one. So I have plans to set up privately.’
‘A private detective,’ he said sceptically.
‘Exactly.’ She nodded. ‘It’ll be virtually all spying on spouses, I imagine. That and insurance-fraud claims involving injury. I think I am going to be spending the next few years lurking in hotel lobbies following people around, photographing errant husbands with other women or vice versa, and people with whiplash playing five-a-side or dragging their bins out on collection day. So, like I said, you’re a training exercise.’
‘And my sister? She was a training exercise too, was she?’
‘I followed her chef to a pub,’ she lied.
He shook his head contemptuously. ‘I don’t believe a word of it, and I don’t want to see you again, Hanlon,’ said Campbell. He pulled out the zippered waterproof bag he’d used earlier from a back pocket, stuffed it in his rucksack and swung it over his back.
He turned away and walked up the track, then he turned to face her, pointing a finger at her.
‘If I hear you’ve been hassling Ishbel, in fact, if I hear your name mentioned again, I’m issuing an official complaint. Have you got that in your thick skull?’
He turned again and disappeared from view.
She gave him ten minutes and then followed.
26
Hanlon got off the bus by the abbey in the centre of Paisley. It was the second time she had been here and she was growing to like this part of the city.
She had travelled from Jura at first light, not that it had ever really got dark. Donald, yawning and swearing gently at having to get up so early, had driven her to the ferry. She had left her luggage there in a locker and now, tired but determined, she set off to the Rob Roy. Hopefully things would go a lot better than they had the day before. She was still smarting from her encounter with Campbell. She couldn’t believe how badly she had screwed everything up. Now he would realise that she suspected him and would take corrective measures. For all he knew, she was on the island specifically to target him. Anyone involved in large-scale drug smuggling would by nature be more than just a little paranoid.
It was two o’clock now and the pub was probably as quiet as it ever would get during the week. Although maybe time didn’t matter for the habitués of the Rob Roy. It wasn’t as if they had anything better to do. And so it proved.
She took a taxi to the pub, the driver looking a little bemused as he dropped her off, his expression saying, ‘Are you sure
