Black Widow by Chris Brookmyre

Author:Chris Brookmyre
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group UK
Published: 2015-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

CONTAMINATED SOURCE

Parlabane was sitting in his car just down the street from the hotel, thumbing through emails on his phone, when a well-honed instinct began to whisper a warning that someone was watching him. There was an older-model black Porsche parked on the other side of the road, lights off inside and out, a solitary figure sitting at the wheel in the dark. He had been there since Parlabane got into his own vehicle, and Parlabane hadn’t paid him much heed, but years of experience had told him to trust his gut on things like this.

He had checked out of the hotel upon returning from the hospital, figuring it was quiet enough to check back in if he decided there was reason to stick around. He had one more thing to look into – involving a sit-down with a former colleague of Peter’s – but unless it turned up something remarkable, he would be driving back to Edinburgh later that night. He wasn’t meeting the guy for more than an hour, so he decided to go for a spin, see whether the Porsche followed.

Sure enough, no sooner had he pulled away than the headlights came on and a subsequent glance in his rear-view showed the nineties-vintage 911 swinging across the street, performing a U-turn. Parlabane’s knowledge of Inverness wasn’t great, but he knew he would hit a roundabout fairly soon if he stuck to the main routes. He encountered one about a quarter of a mile along the dual carriageway, where he executed what the cops called a reciprocal. He went halfway around and doubled back, allowing him to see the Porsche approach on the opposite carriageway, but it was too dark to get a look at the driver. Whoever he was, he didn’t recognise the implications of Parlabane’s manoeuvre for his attempt at covert surveillance, because he reappeared in the rear-view a few seconds later, heading back the way they had both come.

Parlabane was congratulating himself on having baulked the guy when it occurred to him that maybe his surveillance wasn’t meant to be covert. Could be he had recognised the implications entirely but didn’t care because he wanted to be noticed. With that in mind, Parlabane headed back into the city centre and let the one-way system and the traffic lights put sufficient vehicles and distance between himself and the Porsche until he was happy he had lost him. Then he headed out of town. He still had time to kill and there was somewhere he wanted to take a look at.

He let his sat-nav direct him up the hill past the hospital and out beyond Culloden, towards Diana Jager’s address. He wasn’t going to doorstep her, especially after their earlier encounter, but he wanted a feel for the place, and if the lights were off, it might be quite a close feel too.

Parlabane pulled in short of the cottage, closer to the neighbouring house but near enough to see that Jager’s home was in darkness. He turned off the engine and killed the headlights.

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