Ross arrived at Forest Place in Manchester his Peter Davis address and Health and Safety consultants’ persona.  This would cut his expenses, he was intrinsically frugal by nature.  It would also give him time to plan the next stage, although quite what that should be was not yet clear.  He had this vague notion that he would be able to engage the enemy, clearly not an easy task, especially since he had no idea of  “where, who and how”, only the “why” was clear.

It was quite late now, he had stopped off for nine holes of golf at one of his favorite courses, note really for the golf particularly, but he found it a great place to think while ambling around on his own and he didn’t want to get back much before bedtime.  Ross was an average golfer, usually playing off about 16, he had never had the time to play week in week out but managed a decent round more recently after the many weeks practice.  Today his mind had been elsewhere, but his golf seemed to be looking after itself.  It gave him time to plan potential scenarios, nothing concrete but enough to work on for a few days.  He had downloaded his latest emails on route, nothing much of interest, except one from Vivian that he purposely kept until arriving back to his flat. He was pleased to find it in good fettle, all his spywear checked out ok too.   He sat down at the kitchen-come-dining room table and fired up his laptop, he cursed the thing for taking so long to start up, god knows why the bastards can’t get the technology to work quicker, he couldn’t believe that as these days the power of a laptop was equivalent to thousands of Apple 11’s it still took as long to load.  It must be another conspiracy.
All thoughts of idle conspiracies flew out of the window as he read Vivian’s  email.  “Just time to tell you I am in trouble and so are you, they don’t believe my story and have raided 54 Rubbens Avenue.  They think it is linked to a potential terror threat using a newly processed virus, they found the Lab in the house, they think they have found a possible threat.  They know about you and are looking for you”  Love V.
Ps don’t worry about me, I shall be ok.

“Shit, shit and fucking shit!” He just caught himself before shouting it too loudly. Right, abandon this place and the car.  Move to one of his other addresses, silently, carefully.  How quickly could they trace him?  Only he car, he had made no other mistakes, should have changed it he had before, he had become lazy.  He scanned his map of CCTV’s and road cameras, they would know approximately which area of Manchester but that’s all.  They couldn’t pin him down to less than a 5 mile radius.  This gave him time, best wait for nightfall, change the plates on the car (he had spares ineach location) and move the car away from the flat.  Then go by foot avoiding CCTV’s and by then taxi to central Manchester and his safe boxes, no they may be watching these locally, into London and to one of the more obscure safe deposits.  How to get there – train could be watched, ok, pick up one of his other cars in long term parking, then into the nearest large conurbation, Leeds would do and then into London in the next few days.  They would know what he looked like – Hotel CCTV he must presume this at least.  So a quick change of hair colour and the stick on beard until he had time to grow one.  He had planned for all this – it was just the wrong enemy.   He glanced out of the window to check how dark it was, it was early June at 10.15pm, the distant skyline still streaked with daylight to the West, but the streets between the tall houses quite gloomy now.  A movement caught his eye at the far end of the road, a movement that just felt wrong somehow. He instinctively crouched down and waited, another purposeful movement in the distance, a figure darting across the road into cover of the next row of houses.  He moved away from the window, dimmed the room lights slowly, and moved back to the window.  Letting his eyes get accustomed to the darkening streets, he could now make out
what was going on.  His first thought was that it must be someone else they were after.  This idea soon evaporated, he was dumbstruck at the realization that they were on to him so impossibly quickly. How?   He rushed at his mobile – never used the thing – too dangerous, so easily intercepted and traced.  It didn’t matter this time, they new where he was.  He held his phone in his palm, her number flying off his fingers, he stabbed them into the keypad with some venom and even more urgency.  “What have you done you bitch” he shouted immediately she answered.  They’re here already!  How?, How! “David, David, please, please, listen to me I have done nothing to help them find you.  You must have, how did they trace me so quickly, it just not possible”  “Oh Christ” Vivian said, I forgot, really I completely forgot, I am such an idiot, David, its in you case, a tracer, I put it there the first day in the hotel, I meant to take it out, I really just forgot about it. “Great!” Ross said, I am fucked, everything thrown away because you forgot you just happened to bug me.”  “David – you need to move quickly, put the tracer down the toilet and flush it away, its in the top of the case behind the blue ribbon banding, wrap it in something to help it flush away properly.”  Ross ended the call, quickly moving away towards his case, flinging it open and pulling back the blue ribbon that was stuck down to the inside of the lid.  A small grey rectangle fell out into the case.  It looked innocuous, but he knew it was transmitting a small signal that allowed its position to be traced accurately.
Ross wrapped it in a few turns of bog paper and twisting the ends to help it stay together long enough for it to flush it into the sewerage system.  Moving and thinking quickly, trying to concentrate on what he needed to escape.   He ran around the flat and collected the roll of notes he had placed behind the end of the draw in the sideboard, the small colt .23 from under the floorboard in the bedroom, the beard and a large grey coat from the wardrobe and a three quarter bottle of whisky from the kitchen cabinet.  He needed his PDA, the rest must stay, he started the program on the laptop to hard erase everything, it was all encrypted anyway, but if it finished in time it would leave them very little.
Wrapping the notes and pda with the beard he stuffed the lot down the front of his trousers.  Slipping on the coat, he put the small colt into the deep pocket on the right and the whisky in the left.
Running to the landing, the large window opened easily enough for him to crawl round to the fire escape.  He went up..... to be continued...

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