Free The Truth Will Out by Jane Isaac Page A

thick breeze brushed her face. During their last conversation she had been annoyed with Naomi, frustrated at her inability to cope with the situation they found themselves in. Yet Naomi was right to be petrified. Guilt stretched her heart into a tightrope across her chest. She should have stayed, supported her friend, faced up to their problems. But Naomi wouldn’t have wanted that.
    Eva thought of the black gloved hand. Had they seen her face on Naomi’s screen? She swallowed, blinked open her eyes back to the present. The cows had moved away to the other side of the field. She climbed back into the car and, as she revved the engine, made a point of opening the window.
    The sharp wind rustled through Eva’s hair as she pressed the accelerator. Grief turned to anger and she allowed her rage to flourish in her driving, revelling in the twists and turns that eventually led her to the road that ran alongside the vast Loch Ard, flanked by beautiful conifer covered mountains, past the Macdonald ‘timeshare’ resort and hotel where she stayed in her early years, and into the small sprawling village of Kinlochard.
    When she reached the Wee Blether tearoom adjacent to the old shop, she made a sharp left, past the post box, the tiny primary school, through the scattered houses and up into the mountains. The sun shimmered across the top of the loch as she slowed and turned left into Lochside, the two bed bungalow her parents’ bought eight years ago, situated almost half a mile outside the village.
    Twenty minutes later she was seated on the veranda at the back of the property, cup of tea in hand, overlooking the loch. She pondered how different her life would be if they’d dumped the drugs. They brought them back out of fear for their lives. The wrong thing for the right reason. Why now, were they being hunted down?
    The hot fluid warmed her. She gazed across the loch. The isolation and sheer beauty of the landscape slowly drained her of the troubled memories that haunted her brain. For the first time in twenty-four hours, she finally felt safe. With her parents still away on holiday in South Africa, nobody would find her all the way up here. Would they?
    She closed her eyes and relished the warmth of the sunlight soothing her face. It seemed nobody had told Scotland about the snow down south.
    The branches of two silver birches at the bottom of the garden batted against each other in the wind. The sound was distant at first, then louder, then louder still. Suddenly, she realised that it wasn’t the trees at all. She turned urgently towards the sound of the gentle footsteps, scraping across the decking.
    ***
    Glocks, Berettas, Baikals - all automatics. These are just some of the weapons we’ve retrieved from the criminal underworld. We have recovered a few revolvers, but they tend to be on the decline. Usually illegally trafficked in from former war zones such as the Balkans, although a few replicas are made in this country, all are readily available on the black market if you have a few grand to spare.”
    Jenkins and Helen were seated around the end of the long table in the conference room. Helen looked at the images of reclaimed guns on the screen, then watched as Dean in his slick black suit stood back and pressed another button on his laptop. The image on the screen changed.
    “Don’t be fooled by the media,” Dean continued, turning to face his audience, “knives are still the weapon of choice in gangland Britain. Guns tend to draw too much national attention, as we’ve seen recently, so are generally used to scaremonger and frighten, or carried as a status symbol. But the numbers are rising.” He pointed at a graph that showed a crinkled line turning upwards. “What the press don’t know, is that there are a lot more out there than we have figures for, or care to imagine.”
    Dean raised his hand and brushed it across his dark hair. Helen felt her stomach bounce. “We are working very closely with ballistics on