The Unexpected Coincidence by Amelia Price Page A

slipped past him while he
was tailing them. It could only mean one thing. They'd realised he
was following.
    Hoping one of his
agents might have seen something, he turned the boat around and
brought it back to the marshland. By the time he got there, two of
the agents were standing waiting.
    “Did you see where
they went?” he asked before anyone else could speak. They shook
their heads. Mycroft swore again. “Get me a torch and my dry
clothes. And tie this to something.”
    Herbert caught the
end of the rope and looped it around a sturdy fence post a few
metres inland, while the woman ran off. He hoped she wouldn't take
too long to get back. While he waited, he kept to one section of
the boat. He didn't want the water dripping off him to obliterate
any of the evidence that might give him another lead.
    Once he had a
torch in his hands, he examined the helm area but he found nothing
of interest. He would have everything fingerprinted but doubted
they'd find anything. While he was looking the cockpit over, the
third agent, Williams, came running up.
    “Everything in the
cache is gone. They must have taken it with them.”
    “All right. Stay
away from the area and get it cordoned off. I'm going to deal with
the boat first, then I'll take a look at that. And I mean it. Don't
let anyone but me or my brother near it.”
    Williams nodded.
All of them were used to Mycroft's brusque manner and dislike of
interference. If he was involved they kept back, so no one but him
could be blamed if the operations went wrong. Something that had
never happened under Mycroft's care. Until today.
    Not even changing
into fresh clothes made him feel any better. He phoned his brother,
wondering if Sherlock could be persuaded to help, but the call went
unanswered, and although he sent a text, he expected that to be
ignored as well. His younger brother was in one of his moods and it
only darkened Mycroft's further.
    It took him almost
two hours to check over the boat and the few cabins it had. He
found nothing but a smeared muddy footprint near the front left
rail. It let him know the pair had got off that way but didn't give
him anything to trace. It was too smeared for an accurate print,
and he already knew the man's physical make-up. Mycroft had seen
him.
    The boat had
little equipment, and whatever the Russian had with him had gone
over the front of the boat with its owner. While Mycroft had been
sneaking up the back they'd snuck off the front. Once more, they
had slipped through his grasp.
    Having nothing
more he could check, Mycroft got off the boat and allowed the
forensic team to do their best at finding some evidence. They might
find a fingerprint but the chances were slim. If there was anything
else there he'd have found it already.
    He nodded his
satisfaction when he noticed the crime tape surrounding the area of
bushes and reeds that the Russian had used for a hide-out. The
circle had a good fifty metre radius and no one was inside it.
Instead, his three agents stood around it with their torches,
keeping the rest of the people well away from it. Considering how
little he'd communicated with anyone since the previous day, there
were over ten members of staff on top of the original agents
crawling over the marshlands or boat, and they were surprisingly
well informed. At least something was going well.
    With this area he
slowed even further, using the torch to examine every patch of dirt
where a shoe print might have been left or some small item might
have fallen. Given the area, the possibility of an entire print was
slim, but a partial print might be enough. He worked his way back
and forth over a third of the circle before he noticed a patch of
mud that held a good imprint of the Russian's shoe.
    Ten minutes later
a small team of two people had made a reed mat path over a patch
he'd checked and were using plaster to get an inverse impression.
Meanwhile, Mycroft had carried on and was almost upon the centre of
the area. He took even