Last Resort Read Online Free

but I’d chosen Sauce because I knew he’d get it done with least fuss, and probably quickest. There was also the fact that he owed me one. Another chief constable might have forced him out of the service because of Cheeky, but I decided that he was too good to lose, and let him stay.
    ‘I need a couple of things checked,’ I said. ‘First, is there a Belgian travel company called FlemAir? Second, if there is, has it commissioned a Scottish journalist named Carrie McDaniels to do a piece on Spain for its flight mag? Third, if there isn’t, or there is and it hasn’t, is there such a person and if so what’s her story?’
    ‘Can do, sir. What can you tell me about her?’
    ‘Very little; she has fair hair, she’s aged somewhere between twenty-five, if she doesn’t look after herself, and thirty-two if she does. Carrie’s her given name, not a shortened form, and she seems to be a Ms, not a Mrs. Likely she’ll have been on a flight to Barcelona or possibly Girona within the last forty-eight hours.’
    ‘Got all that,’ Sauce confirmed. ‘Are you going to tell me why you need this . . . just in case anyone asks?’
    ‘I’m not even sure I do need it,’ I confessed. ‘The lady just crossed me, and I’d like to check that she is what she says.’
    ‘And do you think she is?’
    ‘Not for a second, lad. That might well be her name, but I’m doubtful about the rest.’
    ‘Do I need to do anything else,’ he asked, ‘other than just check on her?’
    ‘I don’t think so. I’ve given her a talking-to, and that may be enough. Hopefully she’ll get the message that I don’t like being accosted, especially not by journos. When I deal with them, it’s on my terms.’
    ‘How do I get back to you, sir?’ he asked. ‘If she’s in Spain . . .’
    ‘Then obviously so am I,’ I said. ‘Just call this number.’
    ‘It came up as withheld.’
    ‘Of course, sorry.’ Although Sauce was on my contact list, I wasn’t on his. I recited it, from memory. ‘I appreciate this,’ I told him.
    ‘Don’t mention it.’ I heard him chuckle. ‘It feels bloody weird, though, you calling me on the quiet.’
    ‘Hey, son,’ I murmured, just as I arrived at my front gate, ‘how do you think it feels for me?’
    I ended the call, then went inside. The house was appreciably warmer than before, but it was more than creature comfort that lifted my spirits. Somehow, my call from Xavi, and my peculiar encounter just afterwards, had yanked me out of the torpor in which I had been languishing. I was beginning to feel myself again.
    I went upstairs to pack a change of clothes for my overnight visit. As I did, I remembered Carrie’s SD card. I took it from my pocket and held it between my fingers, ready to crush it. I would have done too, had my cop’s curiosity not kicked in. Instead I went through to my small study and switched on my computer. When it had booted up I fed the storage device into the appropriate slot and then clicked on its icon to open it.
    The card wasn’t a new one; lines of thumbnail images filled the screen. I took my reading specs . . . I detest them, but I gave into the need for them around my fiftieth birthday . . . from the breast pocket of my shirt so that I could study them more closely.
    The first three images showed the inside of a house; a young person’s place, I guessed from the furniture, which was modern . . . IKEA or something very similar, from the open-plan layout, and from the clothing that was scattered on the back of a couch; a young woman’s place, for all of the garments were feminine. I clicked on another and saw French doors with something beyond.
    A few photos later, and I knew that they had been taken in a flat, in a modern block, with a small, enclosed terrace, from which the photographer, Carrie for certain, as she’d managed to catch an image of herself in a mirror, had taken some outside shots.
    Some were panoramic, some were close-ups as if she had