The Purple Contract Read Free Page B

stairs to the mezzanine. 'So, what's happening with the shipment?'
    Kevin Clerke shook his head. 'I spoke to them on the radio a couple of nights ago’, he said in a lowered voice. ‘There's been pretty heavy weather around Norway in the last few days––remains of that Low that dumped on us last week. They were heading for a fiord to lie up for a while and let things settle. They'll get here, don't worry.'
    'I do worry, young Kevin. A quarter of a million dollars worth of stuff on a forty foot boat all the way from Trondheim? I bloody do worry, son.'
    'He knows what he's doing. It’s not the first time, you know.'
    'So you keep telling me. I hope you're right.’
    Clerke wasn't going to labour the point. Bringing the cocaine in by small boat across the North sea had been his idea. The result of a contact he had developed in Murmansk. How the Russians moved the stuff to Trondheim he knew not. Couldn’t be by sea at this time of year, obviously. So it must come by road or rail through Finland, he certainly knew better than to ask. Maybe they had a bloody submarine that could go under the ice, wouldn’t put it past them.
    'I want you to go over to Dundee tomorrow,' Manson looked at his nearly empty glass and pondered whether to have another. 'I think that bastard Yank is up to something. There have been rumours. Go and talk to him and see what you think.'
    'Did you give him the twenty K?'
    'Did I fuck. Do I look as if my head zips up the back?'
    Kevin had heard the rumours too: somebody was laundering money through one of Manson’s clubs in Edinburgh. And a certain American currently residing in Dundee had been fingered. It was well known that the Yank needed funds, doubtless for illegal purposes. It was less clear why he had identified Ralph Manson as a likely banker. Kevin thought the twenty thousand dollars would probably have been money well spent; the American had proved useful in the past and it was a piddling sum anyway. But then this other thing had started up, and the Law had been sniffing around far too much of late. You couldn't allow folk to take liberties.
    'Okay, I'll drive over first thing in the morning.’
    Peter Barron stood in front of his office window with his hands in his trouser pockets, watching the Edinburgh traffic flow past the Parliament building. He was a tall man with a hard, angular face, still in the peak of life at forty one. A successful and cynical man who had always found it difficult to express, even to himself, how much he loved this beautiful and extrovert country. A nation which he truly believed would never be able to achieve it's full potential while it was tied to the Europe-loving UK and it's discredited and tottering monarchy. He cringed with embarrassment every time he saw that woman, as he habitually referred to the Queen, parading around the remnants of the once-proud Commonwealth.
    'Mr Harrison to see you, sir.'
    Barron stepped over to the desk and touched the intercom button. 'Send him through, Susan.' He strode over to the door to greet his visitor. 'How are you, Len?'
    Although in his late fifties, Harrison was a picture of health and vitality. Physically small, but with an upright bearing that spoke of a military past. His handshake was dry and firm to the point of making Barron wince. 'Never been better, have you seen the polls today?'
    'Oh, yes. I can't say I'm surprised under the circumstances.' They settled in the leather chairs tight alongside the crowded bookcase. Office space in the Scottish Parliament was at a premium and anything bigger than a rabbit hutch a subject for jealousy and backstabbing. On the wall above them hung a large framed colour photograph of Scotland from space. Taken on board one of the Space Shuttle flights by an astronaut with highland connections.
    'He will not be a very happy man right now and that's a fact.' Grunted Len Harrison, referring to the First Minister, who had already been on breakfast TV fielding awkward questions about the