a bit late. See you 6.30. Just to remind her, in case she might have forgotten, today of all days, that all this – the business, the print shop, Darren and the rest – wasn’t really what it was all about.
She rose casually and fumbled in her jacket pocket for the other mobile phone. Not the one she’d used hours before, in her hopeless call to the emergency services. The customized one that was left switched off until she needed it. She switched it on now.
She dialled the familiar number and then, with the usual mild embarrassment, went through the authorization process – another anodyne code phrase. Salter’s voice, at the end of the line, gave the appropriate coded response.
‘Good to hear your voice, sis.’ Salter’s little joke. They were supposed to converse as if in some non-intimate relationship. At some point, Salter had decided that he was going to be her brother. Somehow, even as cover, that felt intrusive, but there was little she could do about it now.
‘Hello there, Hugh,’ she said. Strictly speaking, she wasn’t supposed to use his real forename, but she’d done so as soon as he’d started to call her ‘sis’. With any luck, it would help the other side track the bugger down more easily.
‘Afraid it’s bad news, sis.’
She felt an empty feeling in the pit of her stomach. Up to now, she’d been living on hope, clutching at the pitifully thin straws she’d tried to conjure up in the dark hours of the morning. Waiting on a miracle. She hadn’t dared return to Jake’s flat, or even try his phone line. Partly because now she couldn’t risk being linked to whatever might have happened there. But mainly because she knew, in her heart, that there would be no reply.
‘We’ve had a death in the family,’ Salter went on. ‘Thought you ought to know.’
‘A death?’ She held her breath for a moment, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘Whose death?’
‘It’s J, I’m afraid,’ Salter said. She could read nothing into his tone. ‘Out of the blue.’
Quite suddenly, she’d run out of words. She held the phone away from her face, breathing deeply, trying to hold herself together. ‘I don’t understand, Hugh,’ she said finally. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What I say, sis. Poor old J’s dead. Dead as the proverbial fucking doornail, I’m afraid.’
She bit back her first response, feeling bile at the back of her throat. There was a note in his voice she’d never heard before, something that leaked through the veneer of cynicism. He’s pissed off, of course, she thought, that’s part of it. But there was something more.
She spoke slowly, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Hugh, stop playing games. What’s happened?’
‘What I say, sis. J’s dead. Taken in the night. Unexpectedly. Not an easy death, from what I understand. He suffered before the end.’
She lowered herself slowly back down on her office chair, not entirely trusting her legs to support her. Her mind suddenly felt clear, as if she’d been dragged somewhere beyond emotion. ‘Suffered?’
‘Yeah, it’s a bastard. A real bastard. Even that bugger didn’t deserve it.’
She could feel herself clamming up, just wanting to get away from all this. This conversation. This job. This fucking life.
‘Yeah, it’s a bastard, Hugh. So is there anything you want me to do about it?’
There was another pause. ‘He was one of yours, wasn’t he, sis?’
She held her breath again, concentrating, trying to ensure that she gave nothing away. ‘I put his name forward, Hugh, that’s all. Nobody forced him to be an informant.’
‘No, suppose not, sis. Sad to see him go.’ There was no obvious sincerity in his tone. ‘Leaves us in a bloody hole as well. Anything you can do to help will be much appreciated, I’m sure.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind, Hugh.’ She cut off the call, aware she was in danger of losing control. She didn’t know what her next reaction would have been – grief at Jake’s death, at the fucking manner of his demise. Tears at her own guilt and impotence. Blind fury at Salter’s smug irony. Whichever, it wouldn’t have been pretty. Now, she sat in silence, staring through the glass partition to where Joe was still patiently taking Darren through the intricacies of the reprographics machine.
It wasn’t her fault. Yes, she’d been the one who’d suggested Jake as a possible informant. But, like she’d said, no one had compelled him to go along with it. He’d had his own reasons. She knew he’d wanted out, that he was sick of the endless brown-nosing to Kerridge and Boyle and their crowd. That was the saddest thing – that Jake probably really thought he was doing a public duty by grassing up Boyle.
She’d known that. She’d judged it just right, known that when they came along with the offer he’d be ripe for the picking. That was what the job was about: spotting the talent. And it didn’t always go right. Sometimes there were casualties.
And sometimes the casualties were lovers.
She knew that at any moment Joe or Darren would glance in this direction and that, when they did, she had to appear normal. A businesswoman struggling with nothing more traumatic than keeping this bloody enterprise afloat in the face of a howling recession.
Calmer now, her mind focused on the image she wanted to project, she opened the office door. Joe nodded and walked across to her, leaving Darren fumbling, apparently aimlessly, with the controls of the machine.
‘Kid’s bloody useless,’ he murmured under his breath. ‘You know that, don’t you? We should cut our losses and sack him before it’s too late.’
‘He’s just a boy, Joe. Give him a chance.’
Joe shrugged. ‘You’re the boss. But you can be too soft, you know?’
‘Take it from me, Joe,’ she said, ‘that’s not one of my failings.’
From somewhere in the next room, Marie could hear the shrill sound of her mobile.
She eased her body down into the hot water and tried to ignore the insistent tone. She contemplated, just for a moment, allowing her head to dip below the surface to enjoy the underwater silence. She fought the temptation to stay down there, hold her breath, let the silence become permanent – though the truth was she could think of worse ways to end it all.
It was a strange bloody paradox, this. Here she was, supposedly out on her own, cut off from all contacts. And she still couldn’t get any peace and quiet.
She closed her eyes and breathed out as the phone finally fell silent. It was a temporary respite, she knew. The call would have gone to voicemail. Liam would leave a message. And then the voicemail would begin its automatic callback, another three bloody blasts of that impossible-to-ignore sodding ringtone.
That was Liam as well, that bloody ringtone. He’d set it up as a supposed joke, a couple of months back during one of her weekends at home. Some pop hit that she hadn’t recognized. She’d no idea what it was and hadn’t taken the trouble to find out, but she assumed – based on previous experience – that it represented some private joke at her expense. Her more knowledgeable work colleagues – possibly even Darren in this instance – no doubt amused themselves whenever her phone rang.
Liam knew he wasn’t supposed to call her on this number. That it wasn’t secure and that his calls could compromise her position. But of course it had been Liam calling. It was always Liam at this time of the evening, and that was another problem.
Every evening, she shut the shop at six, spent half an hour or so catching up with the paperwork, or perhaps redoing whatever task had been allocated to Darren that afternoon. Then she headed back to her flat, getting in at around seven or so. Whatever