abandon, but now she wondered if he was overstepping the mark.
‘Does anybody else know what you’re up to?’ she asked softly.
The answering silence was enough.
‘And what if the top brass find out you’re moonlighting on a job you were supposed to drop?’
‘They won’t,’ he assured her, but a seasoned cop like Helen James could pick a certain amount of doubt in his voice.
‘Be careful, Lorimer,’ she told him, suddenly serious. ‘It’s not just your neck that’s on the line, remember.’
CHAPTER 27
The white Mercedes rounded the corner of the street and disappeared, leaving him feeling slightly bereft. It had been fun driving it around, the tall man thought, turning back to the concrete walls and metal doors that comprised the garage space where Vladimir kept his fleet of luxury vehicles. Still, there was a need to have a few other classic cars in virgin white, wasn’t there? He grinned for a moment, doubting whether any of the brides in their frothy dresses whom he had driven to churches or hotels had actually been virgins on the day of their weddings. They were all the same, he told himself, tossing a grubby rag into the air and catching it again. When it came down to it all women were the same. And he should know better than most, shouldn’t he? The massive metal doors shut behind him with an echoing clang and he twisted the lever to lock the premises from the inside. Vlad was taking the car to trade it in, returning later with something that he had promised would make his eyes water. Well, maybe it would, the tall man thought, scrunching the rag into a ball and chucking it so that it fell neatly into an empty waste bin.
He pulled off the dungarees and slid them down over his thighs, feeling the cool air rush at his midriff as he bent over to release the garment now at his ankles. Maybe he would go into town, see what he could pick up in the sales. It was his birthday soon and he deserved a treat. A new Armani suit, perhaps? Something sharp and sleek to make these Glasgow people look at him with appreciation in their eyes. There was no shortage of money, after all. Vlad saw to that, didn’t he? A crafty look came into the man’s face as he ascended the stairs, the dungarees slung across his shoulders. He had plenty saved up now, easily enough for a holiday in Bucharest if he felt like it. Though whether it would be possible to enter his home country again was a problem that even money might not be able to solve. There were people who could sell you different passports, however. Clever people whose skills in fakery made their prices fairly steep. Could he go along that route, the tall man wondered? Perhaps it was time for a new name and a new identity. Sacha, his uncle still called him, a silly little name for a silly little boy. Alexander had always suited him so much better. It was a warrior’s name, after all; a name for heroes.
He was still smiling as he crossed the reception area, quite oblivious to the eyes that followed him from behind the desk or to the involuntary shudder the receptionist gave as she watched the handsome mechanic open the rest room door and close it behind him again.
Andie’s Sauna was smaller than she thought it would be, Doreen Gallagher decided, shuffling her bottom further to one side to accommodate the two young girls who were sitting next to her. One of them was vaguely familiar, a pale faced wee thing who kept turning to look out of the window as if she were expecting somebody to arrive at any minute. The manager, or at least that was what she had called herself, had already interviewed the girl’s pal who was now flicking over the pages of a much-thumbed copy of Now magazine while masticating a wad of gum. Doreen frowned as the pale girl twitched her body around again. Here, sit at peace, she wanted to growl at her as if she were the lassie’s mammy. But the very knowledge that this was what she would sound like prevented her from opening her mouth.
‘Mrs Gallagher?’ A middle-aged woman wearing a smart white coat stood there, one hand on the door of the next room. A clipboard in her other hand was meant to give a businesslike impression, Doreen imagined, but she couldn’t