Remote Control

by Andy McNab

Genres: Thrillers; Spy Thrillers

Synopsis

Tough, resourceful, ruthless - as an SAS trooper, Nick Stone was one of the best. Now he's back on the streets. After a botched mission, the Regiment no longer want his services. But British Intelligence does - as a deniable operator. It's the dirtiest job in a very, very dirty world.

In Washington DC, it's about to get dirtier still. On the apparently routine tail of two terrorists, he discovers the bodies of an ex-SAS officer and his family. Soon he's on the run with the lone survivor of the bloodbath - a seven year old girl. And whilst she can identify the killers, only Stone can keep them at bay - and solve a mystery whose genesis takes him back to the most notorious SAS mission in recent history...

Remote Control is the first of Andy McNab's blistering Nick Stone thrillers - bestsellers whose landscape is so compellingly close to the truth that they had to be vetted by the Ministry of Defence, and could only be published as fiction...

Release date: January 26, 2021

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 512

Sample

Gibraltar: 1988



Gibraltar: Sunday 6 March 1988



We didn’t know which of the three was going to detonate the bomb. All Simmonds had been able to tell us was that it was a big one, and that it would be initiated remotely.

For now, though, there was nothing to do but wait. The security service had triggers out on the checkpoints with mainland Spain. Until the players were sighted, Pat, Kev and I were to stay exactly where we were – sitting outside a café just off Main Street, drinking coffee, looking and listening.

The spring air was crisp and clear under a blindingly blue Mediterranean sky, the morning sun just starting to make it comfortable enough for shirtsleeves. The trees that lined the square were packed with birds so small I couldn’t see them amongst the foliage, but they made enough noise to drown out the sound of traffic going up and down the main drag, just out of sight.

Through my earpiece I heard Euan make a radio check to the operations room. Everything he said on the net was very precise, very clear, very calm. Euan was the tidiest man in the world. If you sat on a cushion he would puff it up again the moment you stood up. Dedication was his middle name.

I heard a loud hiss of air brakes and looked up. A tour-bus had turned into the square and was parking up about twenty metres away. The sign in the windscreen said Young At Heart.

I didn’t pay much attention. I was bored, looking for things to do. The lace on one of my trainers had come undone. I bent to do it up, and got a jab in the ribs from the hammer of the 9mm Browning. The holster was covert, inside my jeans; that way, only the pistol grip would be in view if I pulled open my black nylon bomber jacket. I preferred to have my pistol at the front. A lot of the blokes wore theirs on the side, but I never could get used to it. Once you find a position you like, you don’t change; you might be in the shit one day, go to draw your weapon and it isn’t there – it’s several more inches to the right and you’re dead.

I had an extended twenty-round magazine protruding from the pistol grip. I also had three standard thirteen-round mags on my belt, reckoning that if fifty-nine rounds weren’t enough I shouldn’t be doing this for a living.

The senior citizens began disembarking from the bus. They were typical Brits abroad, the men dressed almost identically; beige flannels, sensible shoes and a V-neck sweater over a shirt and tie. Most of the women were in crimplene slacks with elasticated waistbands and a sewn-in crease down the front. They all had flawless, blow-dried, jet black, white or blue-rinsed hair. They spotted the café and started to move as a herd towards us.

Pat muttered, ‘Fuck me, PIRA (Provisional Irish Republican Army) must be getting desperate. They’ve sent the Barry Manilow fan club. Friends of yours, Grandad?’

He grinned at Kev, who offered him a finger to swivel on. Whether you like it or not you have to quit the SAS at the age of forty, and Kev had just a year or two of his contract to run.

The young at heart settled down at nearby tables and picked up the menus. It was now big time decisions for them – whether to have cakes or go for a sandwich, because it was half way between elevenses and lunch time and they didn’t know which way to jump.

The waiter came out and they started talking to him one syllable at a time. He looked at them as if they were mad.

On the net I heard, ‘Hello all call signs, this is Alpha. Radio check, over.’ Alpha, who was located in the ops room, was our controller. When we’d flown in 36 hours earlier our team of eight SAS soldiers and support staff had requisitioned rooms in the accommodation block at HMS Rooke, the British naval base in the docks, and turned them into living space.

Kev responded quietly into his concealed microphone: ‘Golf.’

Pat: ‘Oscar.’

I heard Euan: ‘November,’

My turn came: ‘Delta.’

The elderly Brits started taking pictures of themselves. Then they were swapping cameras so they could appear in their own photographs.

‘Slack’ Pat got up and said to one of them, ‘Here y’are, love, want me to take one of all of you?’

‘Ooh, you’re from England are you? Isn’t it nice and warm now?’

Slack was early 30s, blond-haired, blue-eyed, good-looking, clever, articulate, funny; he was everything I hated. He was also 6 feet 2, and one of those people who naturally shit muscle. Even his hair was well-toned; I’d seen him climb into his sleeping-bag with it looking groomed and perfect, and wake up with it in the same condition. Pat’s only saving grace, as far as I was concerned, was that when he stood up there was nothing where his arse should have been. We used to call him Slack because he had lots of it.

He had just started doing a David Bailey when we got ‘Standby, standby!’ on the net from one of the female triggers. ‘That’s a possible, a possible – Bravo One towards the town square.’

Alpha came back, ‘Roger that. Delta, acknowledge.’

I got to my feet, gave two clicks on the radio pressel that was wired into my jacket pocket, and started walking. It was pointless all three of us moving at this stage.

Families on their Sunday paseo strolled across from my left. Tourists were taking pictures of buildings, looking at maps and scratching their heads; locals were sitting down enjoying the weather, walking their dogs, playing with their grandchildren. There were two men with comfortable-looking beer bellies; old and not giving a fuck, smoking themselves to death. Trousers with big braces, shirt and vest, soaking up the March sun.

I wondered how many of them would survive if the bomb went off just here.

I was just starting to get in my stride when a very excited male trigger shouted: ‘Standby, standby! That’s also a possible Bravo Two and Echo One at the top end of Main Street.’

This got me quite sparked up.

I listened for Euan. His task in this operation was the same as mine, to confirm the ‘possibles’ with a positive ID. I imagined him sauntering along the pavement like me. He was short, with an acne-scarred face and the world’s biggest motorbike, which he could just about keep upright because his toes only brushed the ground. I liked to take the piss out of him about it as often as I could. I knew the guy like a brother – in fact probably better; I hadn’t seen any of my family for over twenty years. Euan and I had been young soldiers together; we’d passed Selection at the same time, and we’d been working together ever since. The fucker was so unflappable I always thought his heart must have only just about ticked over. I’d been with him in Hereford when the police arrived to tell him that his sister had been murdered. He just said, ‘I think I’d better go to London then and sort things out.’ It wasn’t that he didn’t care, he just didn’t get excited about anything. That sort of calm is contagious. It always made me feel secure to have guys like him around me.

I hit Main Street and pinged Bravo One straight away.

I got on the net: ‘Alpha, this is Delta. That’s confirmed – Bravo One, brown pinstripe on faded blue.’

He always wore that brown pinstriped suit jacket; he’d had it for so long that it sagged in the pockets, and there were constant creases in the back from where he’d been wearing it in a car. And the same old faded and threadbare jeans, the crotch halfway down between his bollocks and his knees. He was walking away from me, stocky, slight stoop, short hair, long sideboards, but I recognized the gait. I knew it was Sean Savage.

I followed him to a small square at the bottom end of Main Street, near the Governor’s residence, where the band of the resident British infantry battalion would fall out after the changing of the guard. It was where Simmonds suspected the PIRA team might plant their bomb.

Alpha, the base station controlling the operation for now, repeated the message so that everyone knew which direction Savage was walking in. I knew that Golf and Oscar – Kev and Slack Pat – would soon start moving up behind me.

There were six or seven cars parked up against the wall of an old colonial building, taking advantage of the shade. I saw Bravo One push his hand into his jacket pocket as he headed towards them. For a split second I thought he was going for the initiation device.

Without checking his stride, Savage focused on one vehicle in particular and headed towards it. I moved slightly to the right so I had a clear view of the number plate.

‘Alpha, this is Delta,’ I said. ‘That’s Bravo One now at vehicle Mike Lima 174412.’

I pictured Alpha with the bank of computers in front of him in the control room. He confirmed, ‘Roger that, Mike Alpha 174412. That’s a white Renault Five.’

‘It’s on the right, third car from the entrance,’ I said. ‘That’s nose in.’

By now the keys were in Savage’s hands.

‘Stop, stop, stop. Bravo One at the car, he’s at the car.’

I was committed to passing him quite close now – I couldn’t just change direction. I could see his profile; his chin and top lip were full of zits, and I knew what that meant. Under pressure, his acne always blew up.

Savage was still at the Renault. He turned, now with his back to me, pretending to sort his keys out, but I knew he’d be checking the tell-tales. A sliver of Sellotape across a door, things arranged in a certain way inside the vehicle; whatever, if they were not as he had left them, Savage would lift off.

Kev and Slack Pat would be somewhere near the entrance to the square, ready to ‘back’. If I got overexposed to the target, one of them would take over, or if I got in the shit and had a contact, they would have to finish it – and we’d all worked together long enough for me to know that, as mates as well as colleagues, they’d let nothing stand between them and the task.

The buildings were casting shadows across the square. I couldn’t feel any breeze, just the change in temperature as I moved out of the sunlight.

I was too close to Savage now to transmit. As I walked past the car I could hear the keys going in and the click of the lock.

I headed for a wooden bench on the far side of the square and sat down. There were newspapers in a bin next to me; I picked one out and sat watching him.

Savage made a suspicious movement and I got back on the net: ‘Alpha, this is Delta – that’s his feet outside, he’s fiddling underneath the dashboard, he’s fiddling under the dashboard. Wait …’ I had my finger on the pressel, so I was still commanding the net. Could he be making the final connection to the bomb?

As I was doing my ventriloquist act, an old boy wandered towards me, pushing his bike. The fucker was on his way over for a chat. I took my finger off the pressel and waited. I was deeply involved in the local newspaper but I didn’t have a clue what it said. He obviously thought I did. I didn’t want to stick around and discuss the weather, but I wasn’t going to just fuck him off either because he might start jumping up and down and draw Savage’s attention.

The old boy stopped, one hand on his bike, the other flailing around. He asked me a question. I didn’t understand a word he was saying. I pulled a face that said I didn’t know what the world was coming to, shrugged and looked down again at the paper. I’d obviously done the wrong thing. He said some angry shit, and then wheeled his bike away, arm still flailing.

I got back on the radio. I couldn’t exactly see what Savage was doing, but both of his feet were still outside the Renault. He had his arse on the driver’s seat and was leaning underneath the dash. It looked as if he was trying to get something out of the glove compartment – as if he’d forgotten something and gone back to get it. I couldn’t confirm what he was doing but his hands kept going into his pockets.

Everything was closing in. I felt like a boxer – I could hear the crowd, I was listening to my seconds and the referee, I was listening for the bell, but mostly I was focused on the boy I was fighting. Nothing else mattered. Nothing. The only important people in the world were me and Bravo One.

Through my earpiece I could hear Euan working like a man possessed, trying to get on top of the other two terrorists.

Kev and Slack Pat were still backing me; the other two boys in our team were with Euan. They’d all still be satelliting, listening on the net so as to be out of sight of the targets, but always close enough to back us if we got in the shit.

Euan closed in on Bravo Two and Echo One. They were coming in our direction. Everybody knew where they were, everybody would keep out of the way so they had a clear run in.

I recognized them as soon as they turned the corner.

Bravo Two was Daniel Martin McCann. Unlike Savage, who was well educated and an expert bomb-maker, ‘Mad Danny’ was a butcher by trade and a butcher by nature. He’d been expelled from the movement by Gerry Adams in 1985 for threatening to initiate a campaign of murder that would have hampered the new political strategy. It was a bit like being kicked out of the Gestapo for cruelty. But McCann had supporters and soon got himself reinstated. Married with two children, he had twenty-six killings linked to his name. Ulster Loyalists had tried to slot him once, but failed. They should have tried harder.

Echo One was Mairead Farrell. Middle-class and an ex-convent schoolgirl, she was at thirty-one one of the highest-ranking women in the IRA. See her picture and you’d think, aah, an angel. But she’d served ten years for planting a bomb in Belfast and reported back for duty as soon as she’d been released. Things hadn’t gone her way; a few months earlier her lover had accidentally blown himself up. As Simmonds had said at the briefing, that made her one very pissed-off Echo One.

I knew them both well; Euan and I had been working against them for years. I got on the net and confirmed the ID.

Everybody was in place. Alpha would be in the control room with the senior policeman, people from the Foreign Office, people from the Home Office, you name it, every man and his dog would be there, everybody wanting to put their tuppence-worth in, everybody with their own concerns. We could only hope that Simmonds would be looking after ours. I’d only met the Secret Intelligence Service desk officer for Northern Ireland a couple of days earlier, but he certainly seemed to be running our side of the show. His voice had the sort of confidence that was shaped on the playing fields of Eton, and he measured his words slowly, like a big-time attorney with the meter running.

We wanted the decision made now. But I knew there would be big debates going on in the ops room; you’d probably have to cut your way through the cigarette smoke with a knife. Our liaison officer would be listening to us on his radio and explaining everything that we were doing, confirming that the team was in position. At crunch time, it was the police, not us, who’d decide that we went in. Once it was handed over to the military, Kev would control the team.

The frustration was outrageous. I just wanted to get this over.

By now Farrell was leaning against the driver’s door, the two men standing and facing her. If I hadn’t known differently I’d have said they were trying to chat her up. I couldn’t hear what they were saying but their faces showed no sign of stress and now and then I could hear laughter above the traffic noise. Savage even got out a packet of mints and passed them round.

I was still giving a running commentary when Alpha came back on the net. ‘Hello all call signs, all call signs, I have control, I have control. Golf, acknowledge.’

Kev acknowledged. The police had handed over; it was Kev’s show now.

The targets started to move away from the vehicle and I clicked the pressel four times.

Golf came back, ‘Standby, standby!’

That was it, we were off.

I let them walk towards the main square, and then I got up. I knew we wouldn’t lift them here. There were far too many people around. For all we knew the players might want to go out in a blaze of glory and start dropping the civilians, take them hostage, or even worse, go into kamikaze mode and detonate the device.

Alpha came back on the net. ‘Hello all call signs, all call signs – cancel, cancel, cancel! I do not have control! Cancel! Golf, acknowledge.’

At once I heard Kev’s not-so-formal reply: ‘What the fuck’s going on? Tell me – what’s going on?’

‘Wait … wait …’ Alpha sounded under pressure. There were voices in the background. ‘All stations, all stations, the police need another ID, they need to be sure. Golf acknowledge.’

What do they want, introductions? ‘Hi, I’m Danny, bomber and murderer, I enjoy travelling and working with children.’

We were in danger of losing them if we didn’t act soon.

Alpha came back: ‘All stations, ATO (ammunitions technical officer) is moving to check the vehicle. Delta, we need that confirmation.’

I acknowledged. There was obviously some flapping going on in the ops room. The boss was getting a hard time from the police and it sounded like a chimps’ tea party in there.

The terrorist team would be crossing the border within minutes. Once they were on the other side, they could detonate the bomb with immunity.

I was now on the other side of the road, and wanted at least to get parallel to them so that I could see their faces again. I had to reconfirm the players, then stick with them.

More activity on the net. I could hear the tension in Alpha’s voice now, telephone lines ringing, people milling about.

Kev cut in: ‘Fuck the ops room, let’s keep on top of them until someone somewhere makes a fucking decision. Lima and Zulu, can you get forward?’

Zulu came on the net for himself and Lima, very much out of breath: ‘Zulu and Lima, we … we can do that.’

‘Roger that, move up, tell me when you’re there.’

Kev wanted them beyond the health centre. They were running hard to get ahead of the targets; they didn’t care who saw them, as long as the players didn’t. But we still hadn’t got control.

Kev came back on the net: ‘Alpha, this is Golf. You need to get your finger out now – we’re going to lose them. What do you want us to do?’

‘Golf, wait, wait …’

I could still hear noise in the background; lots of talking, more telephones ringing, people shouting instructions.

Everything went quiet.

‘Wait … wait …’

All I could hear now was the background noise of Alpha on my radio, plus my pulse pounding in my head. Then, at last, the voice of Simmonds – very clear, a voice you wouldn’t argue with. I heard him say to Alpha, ‘Tell the ground commander he can continue.’

‘All call signs, this is Alpha. I have control. I have control. Golf acknowledge.’

Kev got on the net, and instead of acknowledging, said, ‘Thank fuck for that. All call signs, if they get as far as the airport, we’ll lift them there. If not – on my word, on my word. Zulu and Lima, how’s it going?’

They came back on the net. ‘That’s us static at the junction. We can take.’ They were at the intersection of Main Street and Smith Dorrien Avenue, the main approach road to the crossing into Spain. The players were moving towards them.

I could lift off soon. I’d done the job I’d been brought here to do. I prepared myself for the hand-over.

But then they stopped.

Fuck. ‘Stop, stop, stop!’ I said. ‘That’s Bravo One, Two and Echo One static.’

Everybody was closing in. Come on, let’s lift them here and now.

Savage split from the other two and headed back the way they’d come, towards the town centre. It was all going to rat shit. We had two groups to control now and we didn’t know who had the initiation device.

Kev arrived to back me. On the net, I could hear the other two players being followed towards the border by the rest of the team as I moved in to take Savage. He turned left down an alleyway.

I was just about to get on the net when I heard a police siren, followed by gunfire behind me.

At the same instant Euan came on the net: ‘Contact! Contact!’

Then more shots.

Kev and I looked at each other. What the fuck was going on? We ran round the corner. Savage had heard the shots too and turned back towards us. Even at this distance I could see his eyes, big as plates and jerking like he was having a seizure.

There was a woman pedestrian between us. Kev shouted, ‘Stop, security forces! Stop!’

With his left hand, he had to push the woman over to the side and bang her against the wall to keep her out of the way. She was going down, blood pouring from her head. At least she wouldn’t get up and become a target.

She began screaming. We had Kev hollering and screaming at Savage and all the people in the area were starting to scream. It was turning into a gang fuck.

Kev flicked back the right side of his sports jacket to reach the pancake holster over his kidneys. We always put a bit of weight in a pocket – a full mag is good – to help the jacket flick back out of the way.

But I wasn’t really looking at Kev, I was looking at Savage. I could see his hand moving to the right side of his jacket. He wasn’t some knuckle-dragging moron from the back streets. The moment he saw us, he knew the score. It was decision time.

Kev drew his pistol, brought it up and went to fire.

Nothing.

‘Stoppage! Fuck, Nick, fuck, fuck!’

Trying to clear his weapon, he dropped on one knee to make himself a smaller target.

Now is when everything seems to go into slow motion.

Savage and I had eye-to-eye. He knew what I was going to do; he could have stopped, he could have put his hands up.

My bomber jacket was held together with velcro, so at times like this I could just pull it apart and draw my pistol.

The only way a weapon can be drawn and used quickly is by breaking the whole movement into stages. Stage one, I kept looking at the target. With my left hand I grabbed a fistful of bomber jacket and pulled it as hard as I could towards my chest. The velcro ripped apart.

At the same time I was sucking in my stomach and sticking out my chest to make the pistol grip easy to access. You only get one chance.

We still had eye contact. He started to shout but I didn’t hear. There was too much other shouting going on, from everyone on the street and the earpiece in my head.

Stage two, I pushed the web of my right hand down onto the pistol grip. If I got this wrong I wouldn’t be able to aim correctly: I would miss and die. As I felt my web push against the pistol grip my lower three fingers gripped hard around it. My index finger was outside the trigger guard, parallel with the barrel. I didn’t want to pull the trigger early and kill myself. Savage was still looking, still shouting.

Savage’s hand was nearly at his pocket.

Stage three, I drew my weapon, in the same movement taking the safety catch off with my thumb.

Our eyes were still locked. I saw that Savage knew he had lost. There was just a curling of the lips. He knew he was going to die.

As my pistol came out I flicked it parallel with the ground. No time to extend my arms and get into a stable firing position.

Stage four, my left hand was still pulling my jacket out of the way and the pistol was now just by my belt buckle. There was no need to look at it, I knew where it was and what it was pointing at. I kept my eyes on the target and his never left mine. I pulled the trigger.

The weapon report seemed to bring everything back into real time. The first round hit him. I didn’t know where, I didn’t need to. His eyes told me all I wanted to know.

I kept on firing. There is no such thing as overkill. If he could move, he could detonate the bomb. If it took a whole magazine to be sure I’d stopped the threat, then that was what I’d fire. As Savage hit the ground I could no longer see his hands. He was curled up in a ball, holding his stomach. I moved forward and fired two aimed shots at the head. He was no longer a threat.

Kev ran over and was searching inside Savage’s coat.

‘It’s not here,’ he said. ‘No weapon, no firing device.’

I looked down at Kev as he wiped the blood off his hands onto Savage’s jeans.

‘One of the others must have had it,’ he said. ‘I didn’t hear the car go up, did you?’

In all the confusion I couldn’t be sure.

I stood over them both. Kev’s mother came from southern Spain and he looked like a local: jet black hair, about 5 feet 10 inches and the world’s bluest eyes. His wife reckoned he was a dead ringer for Mel Gibson, which he scoffed at but secretly liked. Right now his face was a picture; he knew he owed me one. I wanted to say, ‘It’s OK, these things happen,’ but it just didn’t seem like the time. Instead I said, ‘Fucking hell, Brown, what do you expect if you have a name the same colour as shit?’

As I spoke we put our safety catches on, and Kev and I swapped weapons.

‘I’m glad I won’t be at any inquest.’ I grinned at Kev. ‘You’d better start getting your shit together.’

He smiled as he got on the radio and started to send a sit rep (situation report). It was all right for him and the others, but Euan and I shouldn’t have been here. We had to vanish before the police arrived.

The ops room was about fifteen minutes away on foot. I tucked Kev’s weapon inside my jeans and started walking fast.

The mood was subdued aboard the C130 as it lifted from the tarmac at 11 p.m. that night.

Spanish police found PIRA’s car bomb in an underground carpark in Marbella, thirty miles away; 145 pounds of Semtex high explosive and an unattached timing device preset at 11.20 a.m., the time the Gibraltar guard-changing ceremony ended and the soldiers dispersed in the square. The white Renault had been a blocking vehicle after all.

When Simmonds came over, Pat said, ‘As far as we knew they had the means to detonate a bomb big enough to separate Gibraltar from the mainland. All it would have taken was one press of a button. If there’s going to be an inquest, fuck it. Better to be tried by twelve, I say, than carried by six.’

For Euan and me, there would be no guest appearances at any inquest. We were undercover in Northern Ireland with 14 Intelligence Group; it was illegal for its members to operate anywhere else. If either of us had been caught in Gibraltar there would have been a shit storm.

Deafened suddenly by the roar of the C130’s engines, I glanced at Kev, Pat, Euan – and tried to forget what I was going back to. A house isn’t a home when there are no pictures on the walls.

In the Gulf, Pat had a battle cry: ‘All for one and one for all.’ We’d laughed when he used it, but he was spot on. Any one of us would put his life on the line for the others. I cracked a smile; with these guys around me, who needed family? Without a doubt, I thought, this was as good as it was ever going to get.

2



The helicopter was operated by a civilian front company, so the arrivals procedure at Shannon was no different than if I’d been a horse breeder coming to check the assets at his stud farm in Tipperary, or a businessman flying in from London to fill his briefcase with EU subsidies. I walked across the tarmac into the arrivals terminal, went through Customs and followed the exit signs, heading for the taxi rank. At the last minute I doubled back into departures.

At the Aer Lingus ticket desk I picked up my ticket for Heathrow, which had been booked in the name of Nick Stamford. When choosing a cover name it’s always best to keep your own Christian name – that way you react naturally to it. It also helps if the surname begins with your real initial because the signature flows better. I’d picked Stamford after the battle of Stamford Bridge. I loved medieval history.

I headed straight to the shop to buy myself a bag. Everybody has hand luggage; I’d stick out like the balls on a bulldog if I boarded the aircraft with nothing but a can of Coke. I never travelled with luggage that had to be checked in, because then you’re in the hands of whoever it is that decides to take bags marked Tokyo and send them to Buenos Aires instead. Even if your baggage does arrive safely, if it then reaches the carousel five minutes after the target’s you’re fucked.

I bought some toothpaste and other odds and ends, all the time keeping an eye out for Euan. I knew that he’d be glued to Kerr and McGear, unless they’d already gone airside.









The departure lounge seemed full of Irish families who were going to find the Easter sun, and newly retired Americans who’d come to find their roots, wandering around with their brand-new Guinness sweatshirts, umbrellas and baseball caps, and leprechauns in tins and little pots of grow-your-own shamrock.

It was busy and the bars were doing good business. I spotted Euan at the far end of the terminal, sitting at a table in a café, having a large frothy coffee and reading a paper. I’d always found ‘Euan’ a strange name for him. It made me think of a bloke with a skirt on, running up and down a glen somewhere, swinging a claymore. In fact he was born in Bedford and his parents came from Eastbourne. They must have watched some Jock film and liked the name.

To the left was a bar. Judging by where Euan was sitting I guessed that was where the players were. I didn’t bother looking; I knew Euan would point them out. There was no rush.

As I came out of the chemist’s I looked towards the coffee shop and got eye-to-eye. I started walking towards him, big grin