The Nothing Job by Nick Oldham Page A

was only as Henry settled himself in and pulled on his seat belt did he realize that the vehicle’s steering wheel was on the right. He said, ‘You drive on the left,’ with surprise.
    â€˜Oh yes,’ she said.
    Bill tutted and Henry shot him a quick look which said, ‘Watch it.’
    â€˜You haven’t been to the island before?’
    Henry shook his head. ‘I have,’ Bill piped up.
    Georgia smiled. ‘Lots of British influence here, still,’ she explained, manoeuvring the Terrano out of its parking space. ‘We only recently changed to the euro,’ she added.
    â€˜From what?’
    â€˜Pounds … Cypriot pounds, that is.’ She drove on to the road, the shimmering Med on their right, and gunned the big, but lazy, diesel engine which responded sluggishly. There then followed one of those slightly stifled introductory conversations covering such inanities as flight comfort, in-flight meals and other bits of trivia to break the ice. This included the fact that her father was Cypriot and her mother English, hence her almost excellent use of the language.
    That done, Henry asked about the plan for the remainder of the day ahead.
    Georgia checked her wristwatch. ‘If it’s OK with you guys, I’ll take you to your hotel and get you settled in. Then, maybe, we meet up and plan for tomorrow, which is when we’ll move for Scartarelli. It will have been a long day for you today, so you just need to chill for the remainder of the day and maybe we get a meal later?’
    â€˜Sounds OK to me,’ Henry said.
    â€˜And me,’ Bill seconded from the rear. ‘I’m dying for a large Keo.’
    Henry turned and grimaced at him.
    â€˜The local brew – very nice.’ Bill smiled and licked his lips.
    â€˜I’ll go with that, Henry agreed, turning forwards huffily, then looking sideways at DS Papakostas’s profile. ‘How far to the hotel?’
    â€˜Maybe half-hour. It’s in a place called Coral Bay.’
    â€˜In that case could you give me a bit of background as to how Scartarelli came into your sights?’
    She gave a short laugh. ‘Good phrase, because that’s what he did – come into my sights.’ She patted the gun nestling against her right hip.
    She had a good informant, one she had been keeping to herself, something Henry could relate to. He had been a smuggler for many years and was in his early sixties, though he looked fifteen years younger despite his weather-beaten face and grey moustache. Georgia had encountered the man known as Haram when she had been a keen rookie cop patrolling the streets of Nicosia, the island’s capital, in the early days of her service. She had, in fact, worked her way up to Haram. He had been the one every cop in the southern half of Cyprus had wanted to catch red-handed. Her trail had begun with the spot-check and subsequent arrest of a minor drug-dealer under the battered ruin of Pafos Gate. A deal had been struck leading her to the next dealer up the chain and so on, until she reached the final link: Haram. He was known to smuggle Turkish heroin down through the north and then cheap cigarettes and booze in the opposite direction. Although he had been arrested on a multitude of occasions, no prosecutions ever ensued.
    But Georgia – ambitious to be a detective – bided her time. Constantly digging and building a jigsaw of Haram until she had four informants, all with jail penalties hanging over them, passing on information to save their own arses.
    All the patience came to fruition almost a year after the encounter with the first dealer under the gate in Nicosia. Haram was bringing a carload of drugs across the border from the Turkish north of the island by a circuitous route around the western tip from where he would be supplying the tourists and the British forces bases in the south.
    If her intelligence was correct – and jail sentences would happen if