Just outside Perth
Midnight
It was a sopping wet and exhausted Stanton who stood at the edge of the M90. He had swum three miles down stream, knowing that the thermal imaging helicopter was checking the ground to the south of the station. He heard dogs and sirens, but kept swimming on, freezing and as the night wore on the rain got stronger, a veritable downpour. In the end the weather was to his advantage. He skirted the A94 and crossed fields to get to the Glasgow bound section of the M90 and risking being spotted started walking, soaked and muddy along the hard shoulder. Exhausted as he was he knew that he must keep going, the risk of capture now held years in prison and he had been free too long to suffer a cell.
Cars were few and far between and none would stop for the sopping figure, most having heard the news at least on the radio; man on the run. It was looking grim as at any moment one might connect and do the good citizen thing.
The rain lashed at him and he shivered uncontrollably. It was in his mind to get out of the country. Find a friend and leave this mission behind, money or not.
A sympathetic lorry driver saw the sopping figure way ahead and as Stanton held out his thumb the HGV truck and trailer slowed and pulled into the hard shoulder a hundred metres ahead of him. Stanton gathered his strength and ran to the open cab door and dripping rain water climbed up.
“My god friend you are soaking, wait a minute whilst I put a blanket on that seat.”
The driver turned and delved into sleeper compartment at the back of the cab. Stanton took his chance with the man’s back turned, slid the wrapped weapon out of his coat, and without taking it out of the bag, gripped it and shot the driver in the back of the head.
Blood spattered the sleeping compartment as Stanton made sure of the man with two more shots. He covered the body with the blankets and duvet, spending ten minutes neatening it up, just in case he was stopped. He found the man’s bag of spare clothes and put the baggy items on, just to be dry. He quickly checked the man’s paperwork.
Tom Welby had been fifty-seven years old, driving his lorry from Dundee down to Glasgow. What Stanton didn’t know was that Welby was divorced and hadn’t seen his grown up children in years. He spent most of his time on the road and so he was a lonely man always looking for company. He had paid a high price for his loneliness, his humanity and his sympathy.
Stanton found a towel, dried his hair, put the heaters on full blast, drying himself, though he turned them down when the smell of blood began to pervade the cab.
After a half hour stop to make himself warm, dry and look normal, Stanton rammed the gears home and drove the lorry away, concentrating fully and remembering the HGV training he’d had in the Foreign Legion.