Dead Man's Gift 02 - Last Night Read Free

was exactly what she’d be.
    He followed her through the front door, waiting while she switched on the lights, revealing a surprisingly tidy living room with half-decent furniture and modern art prints lining the walls. She asked him if he wanted a drink.
    ‘What have you got?’ he asked, noticing that his hands were still shaking a little from the earlier adrenalin rush.
    ‘White wine. Vodka. Scotch. No beer, though.’
    Scope knew he needed to keep his wits about him, but he also figured he’d earned a break. ‘Scotch, please. Large. No ice.’ He watched as she went through to the kitchen. She was wearing a tight white shirt and figure-hugging jeans that had found exactly the right kind of figure to hug, and Scope felt sorry for her because she could have done a hell of a lot better than the perma-tanned thug who’d tried to kill her tonight. Or Tim Horton, for that matter.
    He thought of Tim then. A stuck-up social climber who couldn’t fight his own battles. He remembered a conversation he’d once had with him a couple of Christmases before Mary Ann had died. Tim had been drunk and uncharacteristically friendly as he’d told Scope about some of the goings-on in the House of Commons: the drunkenness, the sexual shenanigans, the rife use of coke by MPs. ‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ he’d slurred. ‘It’s like Sodom and Gomorrah in there sometimes. If the public had any idea what went on, they’d be apoplectic.’
    Scope had believed it easily enough. He knew what self-serving, hypocritical arseholes most politicians were, but it disappointed him that pygmies like these were the political descendants of the likes of Churchill and Atlee. And it disappointed him even more that he was risking his life for a man like Tim Horton.
    Taking a deep breath, he reminded himself that he was doing this for a young, innocent kid. No one else. And now that he’d killed one of the people involved in his kidnap, Max was suddenly in real danger.
    Frank – the man he’d answered the phone to – was a cop, Scope was sure of that. He had to be. There couldn’t have been more than three minutes tops from when the gun had gone off in Orla’s bedroom to when Frank had called Phil Vermont’s phone. Only a cop would have got the information that fast. And he had to be pretty local too. Which meant he could be ID’d if you knew what you were doing.
    And Scope knew just the man for the job. When he’d been hunting the various individuals involved in the supply of the drugs that had killed his daughter, he’d crossed paths with a computer hacker with the online moniker ‘T Rex’. He had no idea of the guy’s real name – nor did he care – but on several occasions he’d used him to gather confidential information, and he’d always come up with the goods. Scope called his number now and waited while the call was redirected several times before an electronic voice asked him to leave a message.
    ‘It’s Scope. I need your help urgently. I’ll pay what it takes.’
    ‘Who are you calling?’ asked Orla, coming back in the room with a big glass of white wine in one hand and a Scotch in the other.
    ‘A contact of mine,’ he said, taking a hit of the Scotch. ‘A man called Frank called your boyfriend’s phone and thought I was him. He wanted to check you were dead. I told him you were, and he said the police were on their way, which means he’s a cop. Are you sure you’ve never heard of him?’
    Orla shook her head. ‘Phil was always boasting about all these great contacts he had, but he never mentioned names.’
    ‘What did Phil do for a living?’
    She pulled a face. ‘Not a lot. He used to be part owner of a club in the West End, but it went bust before I met him. I know he’s got some dodgy friends, and I’ve heard rumours that he killed someone once in a hit for some gangsters. To be honest, it was always hard to separate the truth from the bullshit.’
    Scope asked for Phil’s address, and as he was