‘What do you need us to do?’ Kelly asked.

‘Can you keep an eye on the supermarket on a Friday night, see if that’s somewhere that might be viable, see where he parks and that. Likewise with the church. And help me out with the morning watch every other day?’

Kelly nodded.

‘What about us?’ Karen asked.

‘You’ve played a blinder getting us the address in the first place. Any luck with the thermometers, Tony?’

Tony shook his head. ‘Not yet.’

‘We’ll need them fairly shortly,’ Duggan said. ‘In the meantime, I’ll need the pair of you to do surveillance on the target’s home every other evening. Keep an eye on his patterns, his behaviour. Does he check under the car? Start changing his routine? Anything that might suggest he’s getting suspicious, more cautious, you flag it up to me.’

‘And then?’ Tony asked, his voice trembling a little. He could not tell if the adrenaline rushing through his system was as a result of excitement or dread.

‘We kill him,’ Duggan said, simply.

Cross Country

Chapter Twenty-Four

‘You’re going to kill us,’ Duggan said, gripping the moulded dash in front of him as Barr wove once more out into the opposite lane of traffic. ‘There’s no way past them, son; you may just calm yourself until you get to an overtaking lane somewhere.’

The disembarkation had been straightforward. As they’d driven out of the bowels of the ferry, they’d joined a queue of lorries, all heading in the same direction. Barr had tried drifting in and out behind the lorry ahead, hoping that the driver might see him so doing and let him pass, but with a dozen lorries ahead of that one, it was a futile exercise.

‘Enjoy the scenery, eh?’ Duggan added, twisting in his seat and winking lightly at Karen and Tony, as if sharing a private joke.

Tony managed a brief smile, though it died on his lips even before he’d turned his head to look out at the road, which rose up to their left and along which traffic was already moving. Karen sat in the back seat with him, though had left a gap between them, her bag placed on the middle seat. As she looked out of the window towards the road, he studied her profile, the curve of her jaw, the sweep of her neck and felt again the irony that their intimacy had created almost a greater rift between them than there appeared to be between her and Duggan.

‘It’s brighter here,’ he said, simply. The mist of rain, which had shrouded their departure, had broken into watery sunshine now.

Karen turned briefly to him and smiled. ‘For now.’

‘So, what’s Uncle Sean at these days?’ Duggan asked.

‘He’s over here actually,’ Barr said, easing his way around the roundabout and up towards the junction leading out of the docks.

‘Is he now?’

‘He was speaking at some EU peace conference in Glasgow.’

‘Is he indeed?’ Duggan said. ‘He could meet us after all.’