Trust No One Page 9

  He glanced up as she entered, allowing Darren the opportunity to scuttle away. ‘Useful morning?’

  She shrugged. ‘Bread on the waters stuff. We’ll get an order eventually, but not today.’

  ‘Never is, though, is it?’ Joe said. ‘Don’t know how you do it. Keep plugging away. Works in the end, I suppose.’

  ‘One of my virtues,’ she said. ‘Patience.’

  Joe looked meaningfully across at Darren. ‘So I’ve noticed,’ he said, ‘though I don’t know if “virtue” is quite the word.’

  She laughed. ‘What excitement did I miss this morning, then?’

  ‘Nothing much. Post on your desk. Took a few messages. Nothing urgent. Darren printed off a thousand copies when I’d asked for a hundred. Usual stuff.’

  She stopped at the door to her office. ‘Anything interesting in the post?’

  ‘Mostly crap,’ Joe said. ‘Couple of confirmation orders, but only what we knew about. There’s a parcel of some sort – marked Personal and Confidential so I didn’t touch it.’

  She smiled at him. She had no problems with Joe handling the incoming mail. Most of it was, as he said, crap. Most of the rest was just dull. A very small proportion – bank statements, stuff about the business finances – was theoretically sensitive, but she had nothing to hide from Joe. Nothing about the business, anyway. The operation was well capitalized, because the Agency had ensured it would be. And it was doing pretty well so far. Even if the business had been struggling, Joe would have a right to know. Funny, she thought. She felt she trusted Joe more than most people – more than Salter, certainly, probably more than Liam, probably even more than she’d trusted Jake – even though she knew next to nothing about him.

  She sat down behind her desk and began to flick through the stack of mail. It was mostly advertising bumf, glossy nonsense that poured in by the bucket load. Some uninformative VAT leaflet from the Revenue. And, as Joe had said, something else. A neatly sealed Jiffy bag, with her name and address handwritten in block capitals on the front.

  She remained still for a moment, staring at the writing. Then she glanced up, for some reason half-expecting that Joe would be staring at her through the glass partition. But he was busy on the far side of the room, his attention fixed on one of the machines.

  Jake.

  It was Jake’s handwriting. There was no question. She hadn’t seen it often, but she’d seen it enough. Now, it was like seeing a ghost.

  She picked up the envelope and peered at it, as if she might be able to discern its contents through the brown wrapping. Then, with a further glance towards Joe, she tore open the package and gazed inside.

  She wasn’t sure what she’d been hoping for. A letter? Some informal last will and testament? A word of goodbye? But the bag was empty, except for a small plastic data stick. She tipped it into her palm.

  An insurance policy, maybe. Something that Jake had arranged to be sent if anything should happen to him. But why her? Or, more to the point, why now? If Jake had wanted her to have it, why hadn’t he given it to her before?

  She felt a chill run along her spine. The obvious answer was that he’d already known or guessed who she was. He hadn’t given it to her before because he’d assumed, probably rightly, that she’d feel obliged to hand it over to her colleagues. And, as Welsby and Salter had intimated, Jake didn’t trust her colleagues, not completely. But if anything happened to him, he might well see her as the only person he could trust.

  It was all too possible. Jake was no fool. He’d been approached and recruited as an informant after meeting Marie. They’d allowed a decent interval to pass before any approach was made, and taken every precaution to ensure that there was no traceable link. But that might not have prevented Jake from having his own suspicions.

  She looked up to see Joe gazing at her through the glass wall of the office. For a moment, she thought he was watching her, but then she realized that he was just standing over one of the machines, engrossed in the smooth action of the printing. His eyes were turned towards her, but his gaze was fixed blankly in the middle distance, watching nothing more than his own reflection in the glass.

  Christ, she thought. She was really beginning to lose it.

  ‘Fancy a beer?’

  Her mind was still elsewhere, her expression that of a diver surfacing back into fresh air.

  ‘Sorry, Joe. Miles away. What did you say?’

  The company accounts were open on her computer screen, but all her thoughts had been on Jake. Jake and the data stick. Jake and those last few minutes of his life.

  Joe was leaning at the open door, glancing at his watch. ‘I’m just about through. Wondered if you fancied a beer.’

  It was Wednesday, she realized. In her first months in this job, that had been the dead point of the week. The furthest from her weekends back with Liam. The point in the week that she’d felt most alone, most exposed.

  Looking back, her relationship with Jake had been a midweek affair, one more way of filling those lonely nights. It had made her realize that she couldn’t allow herself to get too close to anyone. Even ordinary friendships were risky. It was too easy to make a slip, reveal some detail that didn’t quite square with the woman she was supposed to be.

  But she felt an unexpected ease in Joe’s presence, a sense that neither expected anything of the other beyond companionable small talk. If Joe had a private life, he’d shown no signs of sharing it with her, and he seemed to have no interest in enquiring about hers. Their conversation remained resolutely superficial, and they had similar taste in films, undemanding crime novels, music. Marie had half-expected that Joe might eventually invite her out to a film or a concert – plenty of other men had done so on a much less secure foundation of shared interests – but the idea never seemed to occur to him.

  She glanced at her watch. ‘Jesus, that the time?’

  ‘Seems to be,’ Joe said. ‘You OK? You look a bit tired.’

  Typical of Joe, she thought. He gave little away, but he didn’t miss much. He’d already detected that she was distracted, and he was giving her a ready-made excuse.

  ‘Yeah, a bit. Didn’t sleep too well last night for some reason.’ She tapped aimlessly at her keyboard. ‘Do you mind if we give it a miss tonight, Joe? I ought to get the VAT sorted, and then all I’ll be fit for’s falling asleep.’

  ‘Your call, boss,’ he said. ‘Long as you don’t get out of the habit completely.’

  ‘This is alcohol we’re talking about, right?’

  ‘You’re OK, though?’ This time there was a note of real concern in his voice.

  Christ, did she really look that bad? ‘Why’d you ask?’

  ‘Dunno. Didn’t seem quite yourself this afternoon. Wondered if there was some problem.’

  ‘No more than usual.’ She gestured vaguely towards the computer screen. ‘Just the standard balls-ache. Tax. VAT. Chasing up the customers who think it’s a bit abrupt of us to demand payment in less than six months.’

  He smiled. ‘Definitely your territory, not mine. Even Darren’s easier than that. OK, but you won’t wriggle out of a beer next week.’

  ‘Drag me there kicking and screaming,’ she said.

  ‘If you insist.’ He pushed himself away from the doorframe and turned to walk away. Then he looked back. ‘By the way, did you find that package?’

  She looked up, her throat suddenly dry. ‘Package?’

  ‘Thing in today’s post. Jiffy bag. Personal and Confidential. Didn’t want it to get lost under the other bumf.’ He waved his hand towards her paper-strewn desk.

  He’d stepped back from the doorway into the darkened workshop. She couldn’t read his expression.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Yes, I found it. Nothing important.’ She wondered whether to offer more explanation, but anything would sound forced. ‘But thanks anyway.’

  ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘See you in the morning, then.’

  He turned and walked away across the workshop. A moment l
ater, she heard the slamming of the main door.

  She sat for a moment, watching the doorway, acutely conscious now of the data stick sitting in her handbag beside her.

  Typical Joe. Giving little away. Missing nothing.

  Chapter 8

  ‘Guv?’

  Salter paused in the doorway. Welsby was at the far end of the office, his chair close to the window. Despite the pouring rain, the window was wide open. Some of the papers from Welsby’s desk – those not pinned in place by an array of empty coffee mugs – had already been scattered across the room by the icy draught.

  Anyone unfamiliar with Welsby’s tastes might have assumed that he had a love of fresh air. In fact, Welsby wasn’t keen on any air untainted by nicotine. He’d viewed the national ban on indoor smoking initially as a personal affront and then – when it became clear that the ban wouldn’t be rescinded in his undoubtedly shortened lifetime – as a personal challenge. He’d engaged in numerous spats with pub landlords, pointing out in answer to their threats that he was the fucking police, even though this was no longer strictly true. In the office, after a few unproductive run-ins with his superiors, he’d established a compromise that allowed all parties to save face. The only problem was that, in the depths of winter, his office was just slightly warmer than the average fridge. But even that had its upside. It meant that people disturbed him only when they really needed to.

  ‘Guv?’ Salter said again.

  Welsby twisted awkwardly on his seat. His right hand remained dangling out of the open window. ‘Morning, Hugh. Lovely day.’

  ‘Glorious.’ Salter perched himself on the seat opposite Welsby’s desk. He moved the chair slightly to retain eye contact as Welsby ducked his head out of the window to take another drag. The impressive thing was not so much that the lit cigarette never entered the room, as that Welsby maintained his usual authority in the process.

  The cigarette was only half-finished, but Welsby flicked it nonchalantly away, no doubt surprising some passer-by in the street outside.

  ‘How’s it looking?’

  ‘Not good. I’ve been back through every possible compromise over the last couple of years. Most of them are something and nothing. Stuff that we’ve logged in case they suggest a pattern. Most probably just coincidence. Someone under observation who changes his plans at the last minute. Someone who stumbles across one of our surveillance devices. Shit happens. Buggers out there don’t play by the rules.’

  ‘But?’ Welsby picked up the coffee mug and stared into it, as if expecting that it would have miraculously refilled.

  ‘One or two incidents suggest something more.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘We’ve had one major operation screwed because the parties changed their plans at the last minute. In fact, reading that report, it looks to me like we were fed misinformation from the start. Then there were a couple of promising-looking enquiries that died on their arses because someone had got wind of our interest.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound a lot,’ Welsby said. ‘Like you say, shit happens. And the other side usually get ahead of the game with no help from us.’

  ‘Maybe so. Nothing that couldn’t be explained by bad luck and circumstance. But there’s a lot of it, right up to Morton.’

  Welsby nodded unhappily. ‘Ah, yes, our friend Morton. Well, we should’ve been smarter with Morton. Got him into witness protection straightaway.’

  ‘Meaning I should have?’ Salter said. ‘Don’t remember anyone offering me any bright ideas at the time. All I seem to remember’s a load of paperwork and endless questions about whose budget it was going against.’

  ‘Nobody blames you, Hugh,’ Welsby said, in a tone suggesting that, now it had been raised, it might be worth giving the idea some consideration. ‘We’ve all learned something. I’m just suggesting that it might be as much cock-up as conspiracy.’

  ‘If you say so.’ Salter pushed back his chair, as if preparing to leave. ‘Though there’s another consideration.’

  ‘Which is what?’ Welsby already had another cigarette between his fingers.

  ‘Those incidents I mentioned. They’re more interesting when you look at them all together.’

  ‘How so?’ Welsby’s head was outside the window, wreathed in billows of smoke.

  ‘There was one link between them. Different types of job. Different people involved. But if you track up the food-chain, it’s the same party in the frame every time.’

  Welsby spoke around his cigarette, neck twisted to peer back into the office. ‘The suspense is fucking killing me.’

  ‘Kerridge,’ Salter said. ‘Every time. The party was Jeff Kerridge.’ He paused. ‘Now maybe that’s something we ought to talk about, guv.’

  There was a curse from beyond the window. It took Salter a moment to register that Welsby had fumbled his cigarette so that it had fallen back into the room. Welsby swore again and stamped his foot down on the office carpet. He stared ruefully down at the scorch mark and then back up at Salter.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ he said. ‘You’ll get me bollocked by Health and fucking Safety as well as by fucking Facilities.’

  Chapter 9

  By the time Marie left the shop, it was already dark, the early evening gloom intensified by the unyielding rain. Jesus, this was a miserable time of year. Winter hanging on, no sign of any green fucking shoots. She made her way down the side of the building to the car park. It was a dreary place, a down-at-heel industrial estate on the outer fringes of Trafford Park. The car park was nothing more than a square patch of concrete sandwiched between the two parallel rows of factory units, lit by a single street lamp on the corner of the access road. Hers was the only car left, parked in one of the three spaces reserved for the print shop.

  She thumbed open the car’s remote locking, pulled open the door and flung herself inside, immediately securing the doors behind her. She realized that she’d involuntarily glanced into the back seat, her mind subconsciously reliving the horror film cliché of the killer appearing in the rear-view mirror. Get a grip, woman.

  As she was about to turn the ignition, she was startled by a sudden explosion of sound. It took her the moment before her heart started beating again to realize that it was nothing more than her mobile phone. Liam’s fucking ringtone.

  She fumbled for the phone, expecting another perfectly mistimed call from Liam himself. But the number wasn’t Liam’s. It wasn’t a number she knew, but it was naggingly familiar. As she pressed the call button, she realized that it was the unknown caller from the previous evening.

  ‘Hello?’

  There was an intake of breath, as if someone was preparing to speak. Then silence.

  ‘Hello?’

  She glanced at the phone’s screen, wondering whether she had lost the signal, but the line still seemed to be open.

  ‘Anybody there?’

  Impatiently, she ended the call. She contemplated calling back, but concluded that, if it was anything important, they’d call again.

  She started the engine, feeling calmer and back in control as she reversed out of the parking space. As she slipped out of reverse, she reached to flick on the headlights.

  The silhouetted figure caught in the beam nearly stopped her heart again.

  She slammed her foot on the brake and peered through the windscreen. Then she lowered the side window and thrust her head out into the chilly air.

  ‘Christ, Joe, you scared the shit out of me.’

  Joe shuffled embarrassedly forwards, hands thrust in the pockets of his donkey jacket. ‘Sorry. Wasn’t expecting you to pull out like that.’

  ‘I thought you’d gone.’

  ‘Changed my mind. Decided to go for a quick one on my own. A quick two, actually.’ He gestured vaguely back towards the print shop building. ‘Think I left my phone in the shop. Hope so, anyway. Either that or I’ve lost it.’ He leaned forwards, hands on the car door, rain dripping off his hair, pressing his face into the open window.

&n
bsp; She couldn’t recall ever seeing Joe use his mobile in the shop. ‘Did you look in the pub?’

  ‘Yeah. Thought it must have fallen out of my pocket. But there was no sign. So I’m hoping it fell out in the shop somewhere. It should be switched on, so I can use the office phone to call it if I need to.’

  ‘Good luck, then.’

  ‘Thanks. Did you manage to get the VAT stuff finished?’

  She’d almost forgotten her excuse for staying behind. ‘I was feeling pretty knackered, tell you the truth. Thought I’d just mess it up if I carried on. I’ll finish it in the morning.’

  ‘Good decision. There’s still time for another quick one if you want to wait while I track down my phone.’

  ‘Not tonight, Joe, thanks all the same. Really am tired. I wouldn’t be great company.’

  ‘OK. Next week, then.’

  ‘Yeah. Next week. Promise.’

  He smiled and straightened up, his face wet from the rain. ‘See you in the morning.’

  She raised the window, feeling increasingly uncomfortable. She should wait and offer him a lift home, in weather like this. His flat was only a short bus ride away, but it wasn’t a night to be waiting at bus stops.

  Her hand hovered again over the window control. Then she put it back on the steering wheel and shifted the car into first gear. As she accelerated down the access road back out towards the M56, she glanced into the rear-view mirror and saw Joe still standing in the rain, gazing after her.

  She should have given him a lift. She could even have made the effort to go back to the shop and help him track down his bloody mobile. But something had stopped her.

  She was turning out on to the main road before she realized what it had been.

  He’d gone to the pub for a quick one. He’d had two quick ones, he’d said. At least two halves. In Joe’s case, more likely two pints. Bitter, his preferred drink. Two pints of bitter.