Last Resort Read Online Free Page B

house. A quick memory trawl reminded me that there had been a chief police officers’ conference in Durham that weekend.
    I’d gone easy on Joey until then, but I’ve made a mental note to have a private word with him next time our paths cross, as I’ll make sure they do.
    I was so angered by that discovery that its main import almost passed me by. Carrie McDaniels had photographed my house, seven months before our meeting in L’Escala that afternoon.
    Yes, it was possible that she had been doing no more than taking away-day snapshots with her clever new camera. It is also possible that Motherwell Football Club will win the Champions’ League in eighteen months or so, but you will not find me betting a single euro-cent on either of those outcomes.
    Suddenly, my interest in Carrie’s card sharpened. If she’s done it in Scotland , I thought . . .
    I scrolled down, fast, to the final images. There I was, taken unawares in the first, then growing more annoyed in the other two. But what had she been doing before that?
    The answer was, she’d been taking surreptitious shots of me as I looked across the bay, lunched, and talked to Xavi on my mobile. I went a little further back. Clearly, her two guides had been taking her around the town. They’d shown her Plaça Catalunya (where the football ground used to be if you’ve known L’Escala that long), they’d shown her the church, they’d shown her a restaurant called La Clota, all closed up for the winter, and surprise, surprise, they’d shown her Puig Pedro, and the street where I live.
    They’d even taken her along the cami that goes to St Marti d’Empuries, and up the walkway, from which she’d been able to take a fine shot of the front of my house.
    Those who know me a little say that I’m quick to anger. Those who know me well could tell them that’s simply me blowing off steam, and that when I get really angry it happens slowly, and builds up inside me, with very few warning signs. That’s how it was as I looked at those images.
    I did a trick with the computer that boosted the size of the thumbnails, so that I could make out more detail without having to look at them individually, and went back through the catalogue as swiftly as I could without missing anything.
    It seemed that I’d been Carrie McDaniels’ favourite subject. At least one-third of her photo files were of me. She had me in uniform and in civvies, in Glasgow, in Edinburgh. She had me off duty, walking the course at a golf championship, and heading for the Mallard Hotel bar with Sarah on a Friday evening in late September.
    She even had me on the beach with my kids, carrying Seonaid on my shoulders while Mark and James Andrew worked on a sand sculpture of a car. Each child was photographed too, separately.
    That was the point at which my quiet anger turned into fury and I roared at the screen in frustration.
    ‘Thank Christ I took that fucking card!’ I shouted. The words were barely out before I realised that all the images, other than the most recent, would have been backed up, on at least one device.
    I’d never in my life felt vulnerable before, but I did then. I’m used to being fair game, but not my children, not them, never. On my patch, even in my strange emeritus situation, Carrie’s feet would not have touched the ground on the way to the nearest police holding cell; I’d have thought about charges later.
    But I wasn’t on my patch, was I, and she hadn’t done enough in Spain for me to set the Mossos d’Esquadra on her.
    Instead I did something worse. I called Sauce again. He was tied up with an interview, but as soon as he was clear he rang me back.
    ‘Things have gone up a couple of notches,’ I told him. ‘Check out the Belgian thing, yes, but I’m pretty sure you’ll find it’s bullshit. I’m going to email you a couple of images, a man and a woman. She’s Carrie McDaniels, but I don’t know who the fuck he is. He may be no more than a boyfriend, but I’d