Dead And Buried

Forty-three

She had just parked her car in her space in the underground garage beneath her apartment, when her mobile sounded. The screen identified the caller: for a moment she contemplated rejecting the call, but she knew that would be postponing the inevitable.

‘Yes, Pops,’ she said, into the hands-free microphone.

‘Alex, can you speak?’

‘Yes. I’m at home, more or less.’

‘What the hell is this about stopping the intercept?’

‘It’s what I want.’

‘We haven’t nailed the man yet. You can’t stop it. Even if you think you know who it is, you can’t stop it.’

‘I can, and I have.’

‘Gimme the name, then. Tell me who you think it is. I’ll have someone interview him.’

‘Pops, that’s precisely what I’m trying to avoid.’ For a few seconds the sound of her father’s breathing filled the car. ‘God,’ she said, ‘you sound just like him.’

‘That’s not funny!’ he snapped. ‘Look, give me the name and I’ll go easy on him: I’ll send Stevie Steele, rather than the heavy squad. He’ll just talk to him, establish whether it was him and, if it was, discuss his problem with him, gently, without any threat of prosecution.’

‘If I knew who it was, and I’m not saying that I do, I could do that myself. I could go to court and take out an interdict against him; if I did that, any further calls he made to me would be in contempt of court. He’d go to jail for that. If you slap a criminal charge on him the worst he’d get would be probation and a few sessions with a psychologist.’

‘You’ve got a point there, I suppose,’ Bob admitted grudgingly. ‘Okay, the intercept is lifted, but put your phone on auto answer mode as a means of filtering your calls. And make damn sure your alarm’s on night setting.’

‘Are you trying to reassure yourself or scare me?’

‘Sorry, love; the truth is I’m just scaring myself. Do it for me, though.’

‘I will. But what makes you assume that I won’t have a bodyguard tonight anyway?’

‘Indeed? And will you?’

‘Time will tell, Father, time will tell.’