He was on the outskirts of Galashiels when the car-phone's trembler sounded over the droning voices of Good Morning Scotland.
`Bugger!' he said aloud, annoyed that the call had interrupted an item on the Radio Scotland news magazine reporting on the contrast in drug-related fatalities between Glasgow, where the previous year's record high had been surpassed before the end of the tenth month, and Edinburgh, where the incidence had fallen yet again.
Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner tolerated his earphone as a necessary evil, something that went with his job. But every time it rang he resented its intrusion. He valued drive time as an opportunity to think, away from interruptions, or as he was doing on the journey to Hawick, to catch up on the news of the day. Just as his wife enjoyed the sanctuary of her office, so he regarded his car as a place of peace.
Frowning, and with a slight shake of his steel-grey mane, he pushed the button to take the call. 'Skinner,' he snapped into the microphone clipped into the panelling above his head.
`Bob. It's Jimmy here.' Chief Constable Sir James Proud's voice was distorted by static, but still Skinner could hear the tension in his friend's tone. 'Where are you just now?'
`Just coming into Gala. Why?'
There was a pause. Uncharacteristically, Skinner felt anxiety grip him. He glanced at his car clock. It showed 8.19 a.m.
The silence extended, and Skinner realised that the connection had been broken in his hilly surroundings. For a second or two, as he drove on into the small Borders town, he fretted about whatever it was that had shaken his imperturbable boss.
But then the presenter of Good Morning Scotland, her voice sounding as unsteady as Proud Jimmy's, overrode the drugs story. As the woman read the newsflash, the DCC drew his car to a halt at the side of the road and sat there, listening in horror.
By the time the phone rang again, he had turned the car around, and was heading back north up the A7, filled with fear of what awaited him.