Free KILL ME IF YOU CAN (Dave Cunane Book 8) by Frank Lean

lanes pushed the odds in our favour. I turned corners at random knowing that as long as I went downhill I’d eventually come out of the hills that rimmed the Cheshire Plain. It was just after one a.m. We left the tangle of minor roads and reached the main Macclesfield to Manchester road. A few more miles and we could be either on the motorway to Scotland or the A34 into central Manchester.
    ‘Stop for a minute,’ Janine ordered. ‘We need to talk.’
    I pulled the car off the road into an alley at the side of a small repair workshop. The tyres crunched noisily over cinders but I didn’t stop moving until I was happy that we were completely out of sight of passing traffic. Both children were asleep.
    ‘We need to make some decisions,’ Janine announced. ‘Are we both going to Scotland and hiding from these people?’
    ‘I’ve got to see that you’re safe.’
    ‘And how long do you think going to Loch Lomond will keep us safe?’
    ‘God knows,’ I muttered gloomily, ‘it must be safer than here though.’
    ‘Dave if they traced you to Topfield it’s not going to take forever for them to trace us to my mum’s timeshare lodge in Scotland. It isn’t as if we have a long list of safe houses to choose from.’
    ‘Presumably I’ve now inherited Lew’s properties. We could go to the Villa Arabella.’
    Janine thought for a moment.
    ‘That won’t work. There’ll be all sorts of legal fuss before we can move in. You’re going to have to find out who these people are and tell them that we’re absolutely no threat to them.’
    ‘Yeah, should I put an ad in the personal column of the Times? Assassins, leave the Cunane family alone. ’
    ‘There must be a way. Leave a message at Topfield where they’ll find it. Promise them you’ll keep silent.’
    ‘Somehow I think whoever’s behind this prefers more permanent methods of ensuring our silence.’
    ‘Dave, this is England!’
    ‘Yes, it is,’ I agreed. ‘You don’t read the crime pages much, do you?’
    After a silence I continued.
    ‘There may be another way out of this mess. We both know someone who always has well hidden bolt holes handy.’
    ‘Bob Lane, but Dave you were warned to stay away from him!’
    I’d been released from custody, declared to be completely innocent and had won substantial damages from Press and police but Bob’s reputation was dodgy. I’d been told by a senior copper, not a friend of mine but an officer who’d served his apprenticeship as a detective under Paddy Cunane and felt that he’d owed him a favour, that some of his colleagues would be watching me like a hawk, hoping to recoup some of their lost reputation by proving that I was a crook. Their preferred method was to catch me in the company of Bob Lane while he performed one of his semi-legal manoeuvres.
    Bob never makes a move without a squadron of lawyers in tow but in his world deeds often count for more than the small print in some legislative code.
    Don’t get me wrong, he’s not a major villain or anything near it. It’s just that many of the people in the scene he moves in, Manchester clubland and its underside of ‘security men’ are total nutters. If not scumbags themselves they’re often fronting for someone who is.
    Drug profits are another thing. Those who make their money that way, not Bob, are always on the lookout for a club they can muscle into to launder their loot.  Bob doesn’t waste time in the law courts before he ejects them. It’s a rough world and the treatment we’d just received: firebombs through the window isn’t uncommon so Bob keeps a secret property or two handy so he can lie low if he needs to.
    ‘Janine, how’s this for a plan? I’ll hide in one of Bob’s places and try to contact these killers and convince them I know nothing. It shouldn’t be hard because I’ve no idea who they are. Meanwhile …’
    ‘Meanwhile I go to Scotland.’
    ‘Aye, ye’ll be in Scotland afore me.’
    ‘Dave, this isn’t a