‘Rick seems less keen on the idea,’ she acknowledged. ‘He said war is bad for business, and he’s a businessman at heart, right? War costs money. It brings extra unwanted police attention to their operations. It forces people to take sides when they don’t necessarily want to.’

Dale nodded to himself. ‘Well, from what you’ve just said, and the fact that they seem to trust you, it sounds to me like they had no idea that Adrian was an informant. I wonder who did kill him though…’

Bailey hesitated in thought, staring down at the raw floorboards beneath her feet, then looked back up at Dale.

‘You said Adrian probably had other schemes running on the side which he wasn’t telling you about. Do you think one of them backfired on him in some way and that was the reason he got blown up?’

Dale sighed. ‘Knowing him as I did, I wouldn’t be surprised if he rubbed someone up the wrong way, or thought he was clever enough to rip someone off and think he could get away with it. If you find out anything, let me know. I’m sure the murder investigation team will be very interested.’

‘Just remember though, Bailey,’ interjected Frank, ‘villains killing villains is one thing. But these guns are something else completely, with the potential to do real harm if the wrong people get hold of them. Don’t forget your priority in this operation. And that’s to make sure that these weapons do not hit the streets.’

24

The hedgerows blurred past as Bailey pushed the BMW hard along the tight winding country lanes, following the directions on her GPS that Rick had given her in a coded phone message earlier the previous day.

It was the twenty-fourth of January. It had been almost a week since the funeral and she’d been starting to wonder just when she’d hear from him, worried that she’d inadvertently put a foot wrong somehow and had turned them off her.

She’d spent most of the previous few days at the hospital by her father’s bedside. He was getting worse, and her mum wasn’t coping too well with it, having retreated even further into the embraces of her church group. Bailey had also attended one of her scheduled appointments with the police psychologist. She’d talked a little bit about her father but had been reluctant to tell the psychologist just how much it was affecting her in case the psychologist thought she was too mentally overburdened to perform her undercover work properly and recommended that she be withdrawn. Fortunately, in that meeting she’d managed to stave off the prospect of being pulled out, but she knew she had to keep her head in the game, especially today.

It was a fresh sunny morning out in the Essex countryside and Bailey reflected that at the very least this rendezvous was a good excuse to be getting out of polluted hectic London.

There was eight hundred pounds in cash in the glove compartment. Apart from an instruction to dress for a day out in the country, the only other thing Rick had said was to bring the cash, and then he’d hung up without even giving her the chance to respond. As was his habit, he kept business talk to the bare essentials over the phone. However, the request to bring the money was enough to tell her that the sample he’d offered would be awaiting her at this meeting.