Whiteout - Ken Follett [94]
“Didn’t we send a car out to you an hour ago?”
“It never got here. Your tough coppers saw the snow and got scared.”
“Well, if we’re stuck, so are our suspects.”
“You’re not stuck, Frank. You can get here with a snowplow.”
“I don’t have a snowplow.”
“The local council has several—phone them up.”
There was a long pause. “I don’t think so,” he said at last.
Toni could have killed him. Frank enjoyed using his authority negatively. It made him feel powerful. He especially liked defying her—she had always been too assertive for him. How had she lived with him for so long? She curbed the retort that was on the tip of her tongue and said, “What’s your thinking, Frank?”
“I can’t send unarmed men chasing after a gang with guns. We’ll need to assemble our firearms-trained officers, take them to the armory, and get them kitted out with Kevlar vests, guns, and ammunition. That’s going to take a couple of hours.”
“Meanwhile the thieves are getting away with a virus that could kill thousands!”
“I’ll put out an alert for the van.”
“They might switch cars. They could have an off-road Jeep parked somewhere.”
“They still won’t get far.”
“What if they have a helicopter?”
“Toni, curb your imagination. There are no thieves with helicopters in Scotland.”
These were not local hooligans running off with jewelry or banknotes—but Frank had never really understood biohazards. “Frank, use your imagination. These people want to start a plague!”
“Don’t tell me how to do the job. You’re not a cop anymore.”
“Frank—” She stopped. He had broken the connection. “Frank, you’re a dumb bastard,” she said into the dead phone, then she hung up.
Had he always been this bad? It seemed to her that when they were living together he was more reasonable. Perhaps she had been a good influence on him. He had certainly been willing to learn from her. She recalled the case of Dick Buchan, a multiple rapist who had refused to tell Frank where the bodies were despite hours of intimidation, shouting, and threats of violence. Toni talked quietly to him about his mother and broke him in twenty minutes. After that, Frank had asked her advice about every major interrogation. But since they split up, he seemed to have regressed.
She frowned at her phone, racking her brains. How was she going to put a bomb under Frank? She had something over him—the Farmer Johnny Kirk story. If the worse came to the worst, she could use that to blackmail him. But first there was one more call she could try. She scrolled through the memory of her mobile and found the home number of Odette Cressy, her friend at Scotland Yard.
The phone was answered after a long wait. “This is Toni,” she said. “I’m sorry to wake you.”
Odette spoke to someone else. “Sorry, sweetheart, it’s work.”
Toni was surprised. “I didn’t expect you to be with someone.”
“It’s just Santa Claus. What’s new?”
Toni told her.
Odette said, “Jesus Christ, this is what we were afraid of.”
“I can’t believe I let it happen.”
“Is there anything that might give us a hint about when and how they plan to use it?”
“Two things,” Toni said. “One: they didn’t just steal the stuff—they poured it into a perfume sprayer. It’s ready to use. The virus can be released in any crowded place—at a cinema, on a plane, in Harrods. No one would know it was happening.”
“A perfume spray?”
“Diablerie.”
“Well done—at least we know what we’re looking for. What else?”
“A guard heard them talk about meeting the client at ten.”
“At ten. They’re working fast.”
“Exactly. If they deliver the stuff to their customer by ten o’clock this morning, it could be in London tonight. They could release it in the Albert Hall tomorrow.”
“Good work, Toni. My God, I wish you’d never left the police.”
Toni began to feel more cheerful. “Thanks.”
“Anything else?”
“They turned north when they left here—I saw their van. But there’s a blizzard, and the roads are becoming impassable. So they probably aren’t far from where I’m standing.”
“That means we have