Survive in the Shadows - Bill Graham - Bog

Synopsis: Roy Chalmers a recently retired professional criminal was relaxing in the early evening as he sat on the deck of his launch moored at the marina in Mentone in the South of France. As what had been normal for him over the past few months he was much the worst of the wine and beer he had been consuming for most of the day. And also as was the norm, his mind was forever on Margo and the guilt that now possessed him, he knew that he and only he was the cause of the accident a few months earlier that had left his girlfriend Margo lying in a coma in the local hospital. His thoughts were disturbed as Thomas the commodore of the marina a now retired Hong Kong police inspector came aboard to join him for a drink. In the conversation that followed he suggested to Roy that the excessive drinking and gambling that he was doing was not helping him or Margo and that as he had obviously lost the place, his advice was that Roy should go back over his life and find out where he had gone wrong. Roy spent the rest of the evening doing just that which took him back over the years to his most recent lucrative activity in Scotland and through this how Margo had come into his life.He had come out of prison after finishing a three year term and had contacted an old friend and partner in crime Ken Anderson who as it turned out was now deeply involved with an International Drugs operation run by another old acquaintance Don Hay a well known underworld figure and at that time unknown to him also had an involvement with an Irish Republican Unit and it was because of his meeting up with Ken that Don had paid Margo a working prostitute to get close to him and report all his and Ken's movements.Don at the orders of his superiors decides to replace Ken and he eventually offered Roy a lucrative place within the organisation loaning him a large amount of cash to get himself settled. Roy then found himself torn between his loyalties to Ken and his natural self-interest. Having built up a relationship with Margo and her confessing her involvement with Don and to her being a call girl, he and Margo then decide that as they had a great deal in common, they would go away together and not get involved with Don and the drugs. Unfortunately unknown to them Roy had been under surveillance by the National Drugs Squad from the day he had come out of prison and met up with Ken. The pair planned their disappearance well but within a day the drugs squad visited them in their hotel room and Roy was simply blackmailed into returning to Edinburgh and accepting the position he had been offered by Don and was now expected to become a police informer. Roy now had to play the dangerous game of being a friend to all the players yet protecting him and Margo at all times. Did he succeed?