shrugged. 'Better ask the driver,' he sai with a nervous grin. He'd never seen the big boss before, a: it was a privilege he could well have done without. Krasi ruthlessness in Tadeusz's name was a legend among corrupt of Central Europe.
Tadeusz cocked an eyebrow at the driver.
'I keep it in the casing of my CB radio,' the driver saic He led Tadeusz round to the lorry cab and pulled the radii free of its housing. It left a gap large enough to hold fou sealed cakes of compressed brown powder.
'Thank you,' Tadeusz said. 'There's no need for you to be troubled with that on this trip.' He reached inside an extracted the packages. 'You'll still get your money, of course Krasic watched, feeling the hair on the back of his necl stand up. He couldn't remember the last time he'd crossed frontier with so much as a joint of cannabis. Driving across Europe with four kilos of heroin seemed like insanity. Hij boss might be suffering from a death wish, but Krasic didn'l want to join the party. Muttering a prayer to the Virgin, he followed Tadeusz back to the limo.
2
Carol Jordan grinned into the mirror in the women's toilet and punched the air in a silent cheer. She couldn't have had better interview if she'd scripted it herself. She'd known her tuff, and she'd been asked the kind of questions that let her low it. The panel - two men and a woman - had nodded md smiled approval more often than she could have hoped for in her wildest dreams.
She'd worked for this afternoon for two years. She'd moved from her job running the CID in the Seaford division of East Yorkshire Police back to the Met so she'd be best placed to step sideways into the elite corps of the National Criminal (Intelligence Service, NCIS. She'd taken every available course on criminal intelligence analysis, sacrificing most of her off duty time to background reading and research. She'd even used a week of her annual leave working as an intern with a private software company in Canada that specialized in crime Imkage computer programs. Carol didn't mind that her social life was minimal; she loved what she was doing and she'd disciplined herself not to want more. She reckoned there couldn't be a detective chief inspector anywhere in the country who had a better grasp of the subject. And now she was ready for the move.
Her references, she knew, would have been impeccable. Her former chief constable, John Brandon, had been urging her for a long time to move away from the sharp end of policing in the strategic area of intelligence and analysis. Initially, she h resisted, because although her early forays into the area h given her a significantly enhanced professional reputatio they'd left her emotions in confusion, her self-esteem at an a time low. Just thinking about it now wiped the grin from h face. She gazed into her serious blue eyes and wondered ho long it would be before she could think about Tony Hill witho the accompanying feeling of emptiness in her stomach.
She'd been instrumental in bringing two serial killers ^ justice. But the unique alliance she'd formed with Tony, psychological profiler with more than enough twists in h own psyche to confound the most devious of minds, haj breached all the personal defences she'd constructed overf dozen years as a police officer. She'd made the cardinal errc of letting herself love someone who couldn't let himself lo\ her.
His decision to quit the front line of profiling and retre to academic life had felt like a liberation for Carol. At last si was free to follow her talent and her desire and focus on thl kind of work she was best suited to without the distractioj of Tony's presence.
Except that he was always present, his voice in her heac his way of looking at the world shaping her thoughts. I
Carol ran a frustrated hand through her shaggy blondl hair. 'Fuck it,' she said out loud. 'This is my world now, Tony.]
She raked around in her bag and found her lipstick. Sh^ did a quick repair job then smiled at her reflection again, thu time with more than a hint of defiance. The interview pane, had asked her to return in an hour for their verdict. Sh^ decided to head down to the first-floor canteen and have thfi lunch she'd been too nervous to manage earlier. j