The hit man had selected his location well, thought Lorimer as they approached Glasgow's City Inn. If he had planned to be in a siege situation, Stevens couldn't have made a better strategic choice. The hotel was bounded on one side by the river and there was a police launch just out of firing range, in the lee of its southern bank. The Squinty Bridge and the main road to the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre had been closed to traffic with police cordons set up around the adjoining streets, the road block at the slip road to the M8 causing most of the disruption for motorists.
Looking up at the pale blue sky and a single gull floating over the river, Lorimer wondered at how calm it all seemed. There was little sound of traffic save from the distant rumble across the faraway bridges.
His decision to call this operation 'eyeball in the skyball' had been met with curious looks from those officers too young to remember The Perishers cartoons. But it had seemed an appropriate tag for this hostage situation, especially when the new technology of the PD-100 Black Hornet was to be utilised. It might have seemed like a waste of an afternoon at the time, but now Lorimer found himself pinning a lot of hope on this new, untried device. He grinned as he remembered the superintendent's raised eyebrows: for once Mark Mitchison had been in total accord with all of Lorimer's proposals.
The window of Stevens' room was at an acute angle from their present position, but they would be able to see when the Black Hornet was activated and watch its flight upwards to the hotel's top floor then listen to what was happening inside. An additional advantage was that this tiny helicopter could send images back to the monitor that was secreted inside the police vehicle where Lorimer sat with Wilson and Solly.
'Lucky that Brogan knew which hotel they were in,' DS Wilson murmured to Lorimer as they sat waiting in the patrol car opposite the hotel car park.
'More than lucky for us,' Lorimer replied quietly. 'Especially when his sister told him their room number into the bargain.'
Both officers kept other thoughts to themselves: that sometimes luck played a part in bringing an investigation to a satisfactory close. But it was far from being ended and much could still be played out against the backdrop of this riverside scene. It was hard to imagine that Strathclyde Police now had this place surrounded, the quiet was so intense.
'What's happening with Brogan?' Wilson whispered.
'Being flown back to the UK under escort,' Lorimer replied.
'Right, looks like we've got all our ducks in a row,' he added, spotting the officer who was to launch the Black Hornet. 'Radio silence, all units, please,' he said, nodding to the members of his team who watched and waited from the confines of their vehicle.
Mick Stevens was completely oblivious to the tiny helicopter whirring silently past the window of his bedroom, hovering to a place just out of his direct line of sight. But he did know that things had begun to happen.
The fire alarm had been set off half an hour ago, making him look out into the corridor. The frightened face of a porter met his as the man rushed towards the nearest exit. And in that one look, the hit man had seen something he recognised. Fear. And not just the fear of some bogus fire. It was fear of him. The hit man. Mick Stevens.
So now he knew it was happening. Everything had caught up with him yet all he felt was a strange sense of calm, as though this day had been inevitable.
When he heard the loudspeaker announcing the police presence, Stevens had been savvy enough to keep out of sight from the window There would be police marksmen all over the bloody place, ready to pick him off the moment they saw his face.
'Let the woman go, Stevens!' a voice commanded, its booming tones reverberating in the cold air outside his room.
'What d'you think, darlin'? Should I let you go?' Mick smiled sadly at Marianne whose eyes bulged with terror at the pistol pointed at her. 'After all, Billy's been a bad boy, bringing the cops after us, hasn't he?' Stevens reasoned, waving the gun at her.
'Deserves to be punished,' he went on. 'And what better way,' he brandished the weapon closer to Marianne's face, 'than to leave him a little message?' he laughed softly, pulling one finger back.
Marianne shrank further into the chair, her body slick with sweat under the thin covering of her nightdress. He was going to kill her. Any minute now he was going to press that trigger… she closed her eyes, terror numbing her senses, her only prayer that it would be over quickly.
'Right, you're coming with me, darlin',' Mick crooned softly. 'A little walk upstairs. See if you'd like to fly instead.'
Lorimer and Wilson exchanged glances as the couple left the hotel bedroom and disappeared. The Black Hornet's microphone had picked up the hit man's words perfectly but it was unable to do any more unless he appeared by that window.
'The roof,' Lorimer said, shortly. 'He's taking her up onto the roof.'
The DCI shifted his position to get a better view of the upper level of the hotel, then spoke into the mouthpiece. 'Attention all units. No firing until you are absolutely sure that the girl is out of Stevens' way. And as soon as we have sight of them get the Hornet up to their level!'
'Oh my God,' Wilson whispered. `D'you think..
Lorimer's face was grim as he replied. 'I think he may be going to jump,' he said. 'And take Marianne with him.'
Amit had watched the men following him, aware of their presence at every street corner. Didn't they know how adept he had become in those frightened weeks after his father's death when spies had dogged his every footstep? Here in this strange city he might have been considered an easy target, but Amit Shafiq knew all about the art of surveillance.
Hiding from these undercover officers was not an option, so the man from Lahore had decided to adopt a different strategy altogether.
He was not going to be hunted all of his life. No, he would turn this to his own advantage. Now, whenever he saw them, Amit simply turned and walked back towards them, across busy roads, in and out of the subways, smiling to himself as they moved away, shiftily, as though they hoped their cover was still intact.
So it was that the hunters became the hunted and Amit Shafiq had let several of them pick up his trail, hoping that they might eventually lead him to where Marianne was hiding. Practising that U-turn, he had followed different men and women all over the city until this morning. One of them, a woman in jeans and a sweatshirt, ostensibly out jogging on Byres Road, had put one hand to her ear as if she was adjusting her iPod. But it was the expression on her face as she stopped mid-stride, rather than the tell-tale action, that immediately alerted Amit. Something was happening.
Suddenly ignoring the Asian, she broke into a run, fled across Great Western Road, one hand waving frantically as she hailed a taxi.
Amit was not far behind her.
He grinned as he got into his own cab, feeling almost like a boy again as he told the taxi driver, 'Follow that cab!'
The road at Houldsworth Street had been closed to traffic but the woman's taxi stopped a little beyond the police tape and Amit saw her get out, brandishing what he took to be a warrant card at the officer who bent towards the taxi driver.
'Here,' Amit whispered to his own driver. 'You never saw me.
All right?' Then thrusting a couple of twenties into the man's hand, he slipped out of the cab and walked cautiously past the empty car park at PC World, and the deserted forecourt of the Citroen garage.
'Sorry, you can't go past here, sir,' the uniformed officer told Amit. `DCI Lorimer needs me,' Amit told him firmly. 'I'm with that other officer but we got split up back there,' he lied, pointing to the woman in running gear who was now quite far ahead, almost at the corner where the road forked right towards the City Inn.