The Ardmore Inheritance by Rob Wyllie (reading the story of the .txt) 📕

Doesn't seem likely, does it? But what you have done has given me another clue in the search for him. Because to be honest, and I'm embarrassed to say this, I hadn't considered that Geordie the hacker might be an actual Geordie, if you get my drift. Something to mention to wee Eleanor I think. So cheers for that. And on that note...'

He rolled off towards the bar without waiting for a reaction. For once, there wasn't a queue and his rolled-up twenty-pound note succeeded in catching the attention of a sullen-faced barmaid.

'Yes?' she said with a distinct absence of charm.

'Two Doom Bars, a large chardonnay and a wee triple whisky. That's three shots in a glass if you've not heard of it before, and Bells will do fine if you've got it.'

'We've got Teachers,' she said, turning her back on him. Listlessly she began to assemble his order, a process she evidently meant to string out as far as possible. It was getting on for five minutes when she eventually returned.

'Twenty-three thirty-five,' she said, fixing him with a mirthless stare.

'Christ, I should have taken out a mortgage,' he said, fumbling in his pocket for some coins.

The barmaid gave no response, he assuming it wasn't the first time she'd heard the jibe. He left the note and a pile of pound coins on the bar and told her to keep the change, which caused no improvement in her demeanour. Sneaking a furtive glance over his shoulder, he downed the whisky in one before heading back to the others with the drinks. Fortification for what lay ahead.

'Cheers brother,' Jimmy said, raising his glass. 'Nice one.'

'Yes, thank you Frank,' Maggie said, flashing him a smile, getting him thinking that maybe the good looks and charm were working after all. 'And what about your graffiti guy? I've not heard you mentioning how you were getting on with the search.'

He smiled. 'I'm just leaving all of that to wee Eleanor Campbell at the moment. She said she was getting close last time I spoke, but I've not heard anything since. But that reminds me. Did I tell you that our Geordie-boy did another one of his wee paintings about a week ago? Some place down in Fulham, Clonmel Road I think it was called.'

'Hang on a minute,' Jimmy said, sounding surprised. 'That's where Kirsty Macallan lives with her husband. You don't know what the number was by any chance?'

'Not off the top of my head, but I can easily find out. But Christ, wouldn't it be interesting if the Macallans were the target? But no, it couldn't be, that would be mental.'

'I don't see why not,' Maggie said, 'because from what you told me, he targets people in the public eye. And both Kirsty and her husband qualify on that score.'

Frank gave her a doubtful look. 'Well I suppose so, but I don't really believe in coincidences. But maybe that's another one for my mate Ronnie French to check out. You never know.'

He saw Maggie glimpsing at her watch. Frank knew her routine off by heart now on these Thursday meet-ups. Two large glasses of chardonnay would take her through to quarter-to-seven, at which point she began to think about leaving, so that she would be back in Hampstead in good time to read her little boy his bedtime story. And quite naturally she was not going to allow herself to be late for that, meaning that the ask-her-out-window extended to no more than five or ten minutes, a window that he had thus far failed to take advantage of. But it was only twenty-to, so there was still plenty of time.

When he'd come in, he'd noticed the group of football fans clustered around a table in the corner, each attired in current-season replica shirts, shirts that would have cost them over eighty quid a pop from the club shop up at the Emirates. Arsenal were in Thursday-night Europa League action, a bit of a comedown for a club with such a solid Champions League heritage, but even this Mickey-Mouse competition made a good night out for the faithful. Without knowing why, he'd mentally kept tabs of their frequent trips to the bar, and now reckoned they were each five to six pints to the good. At that level of inebriation, there was every chance that some of them would be barred from entering the stadium, not that it bothered Frank. What did bother him was that with his policeman's nose for trouble, he could smell something brewing. Or more accurately, he could hear something brewing. Because when you heard a glass smash in a bar and nobody then said sorry and started asking for a brush and dustpan, you knew something was going to kick off. And this one, from what he had just picked up, had nothing to do with football.

'You been shagging my missus? Have you, you bastard?'

The man was about thirty, six-two in height and broad with it, with closely-cropped hair and a prominent tattoo on his neck that proclaimed his allegiance to his football club. He was holding the shattered glass with its jagged edge less than a centimetre from the face of another man, whose short and slim physique was no match for that of the complainant, even if he'd had the chance to put up a fight. Plainly terrified, he was protesting his innocence.

'No mate, that's bollocks. I swear it on my granddad's grave. Honest mate, I wouldn't do nothing like that. Honest I wouldn't.'

It didn't seem to have convinced his accuser. 'You're a fucking lying toe-rag Vince, and I'm going to rip your pretty face to shreds, see if I don't. And then we'll see how you get on with the ladies, won't we?'

Frank gave a deep sigh and fumbled in his pocket for his warrant card. It was just his bloody luck that it was happening this night of all nights, and that the antagonist was such a man-mountain of a guy. But duty was