‘Subject vehicle is taking a right right right on to Byres Road. Foxtrot Five make ground. I’m letting him run straight on at the lights before subject becomes able to draw my face from memory.’

‘Yes yes,’ she replied, feeling her heart speed up far faster than the little Renault was accelerating.

She had eyeball now.

This time, Jasmine Sharp vowed to herself, I won’t screw up.

She watched Uncle Jim’s car – no, Delta Seven’s car – veer left ahead of the junction, heading west along Dumbarton Road, and found herself suddenly closer than she intended behind the blue Citroë n minivan. She had to step on the brakes quite stiffly, her anxious literal response to the ‘make ground’ command causing her to forget that the subject would be slowing to a stop as he waited to turn right. She hoped he wasn’t looking in the rear-view, as nothing grabbed the attention quite like the appearance that you weren’t going to stop in time, especially with this guy.

Jasmine watched him indicate, almost hypnotised by the blinking light, focusing on it so that she wasn’t tempted to look at his rearview mirror.

It took seven or eight oscillations before she realised that she’d neglected to indicate herself. She corrected her omission, feeling as she always did on this job that she had too many balls in the air, and that her efforts to get the procedure right were in danger of causing her to forget to take care of the basics. It was bad enough when she was the secondary in a two-car surveillance, but when it was she who had eyes-on, she kept expecting at any second to stall the engine, if not smash into a lamp post, pedestrian or double-decker bus she had failed to notice due to her attention being so singularly directed at the subject vehicle.

I won’t screw up, she vowed. I won’t screw up. Not again. Not like the previous vehicle surveillance, in Paisley last week, when she lost the subject in the cinema car park. Not like Duntocher the week before, when she managed to get burned by following the subject twice around a roundabout. And not like Monday. Sweet Jesus, no, please, not like Monday. She’d be feeling embarrassed about that when she was vegetating in some old folk’s home, in her dotage: embarrassed for herself and mortified about how badly she’d let Jim down. She could feel her cheeks burn just thinking about it.