Trust No One

The story they’d put about was that he was taking early retirement, and that Marie was an associate in the same line of illegal business. That she was buying into more than just the print shop. All it needed was for her predecessor to effect a few introductions to the right people and she’d be off and running.

Shit, she thought. Maybe this wasn’t an exercise after all. Maybe it was for real.

If so, she couldn’t imagine that this was just their way of making the introductions, short-circuiting the usual social niceties by bundling her into the back of a sodding van. If this was for real, they’d already sussed out who she was. And that meant that she wasn’t likely to leave this place alive.

Jesus, what was she thinking? Of course it was just an exercise. She was allowing them to play with her head. This was another of Winsor’s fucking tests. Physical assault, threat, psychological torture. Let’s see how she copes with that little lot.

‘What history?’ she said. ‘What are you talking about?’

The man suddenly leaned forward, his features finally becoming visible to her. He was no one she recognized.

‘Don’t you understand, love? We know who you are. We know who you work for. Do you get it now, bitch?’

There was a venom in the final word that shocked her. Christ, she thought. I was right. It’s not a fucking exercise. She began to push herself to her feet, her mind racing.

‘I don’t—’

The man pushed the table violently against her, knocking her back into the seat. ‘Sit down.’ He leaned towards her, the pistol back in his hand. He was tapping the barrel gently against the tabletop as if he didn’t quite know what to do with the weapon. ‘You’re going nowhere. You’re going to tell me all about your undercover work. You’re going to tell me who else is undercover. You’re going to tell me who’s a grass. You’re going to tell me every fucking thing I want to know.’

‘Look, I really don’t—’

‘Know what I’m talking about. Change the record, love.’

She took a deep breath. She would say nothing. She thought – she hoped – that she’d have said nothing even if she believed that it might help secure her release. But these people weren’t going to release her. Not if they believed she was an undercover officer. Not now she’d seen this man’s face. She could feel herself on the verge of breaking down, but she wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of seeing that.

‘I don’t know who you think I am,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice steady. ‘But you’ve got the wrong woman. I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.’

The man smiled and shook his head. ‘You’ve got bottle, I’ll give you that, darling. But you’ll talk in the end. You’d be surprised how persuasive we can be when we put our minds to it.’

As he spoke, she silently eased her chair back a few inches, giving herself room to move her legs. Then, suddenly, she thrust the chair back further and kicked out with both feet at the edge of the table, driving it back into the man’s groin. Immediately, she was on her feet, trying to force her way past him to the door.

It almost worked. Her aim had been perfect. The man doubled forwards in pain, momentarily losing his grip on the gun. She’d been unsure if there was anyone else standing behind him in the darkness, but there were only the two of them in the room. She was past him and already reaching for the door when he grabbed her wrist, pulling her savagely back round towards him.

‘Stop it, you stupid bitch.’ He grabbed her throat and forced her back hard against the wall. She was reaching for his face, trying desperately to claw at his eyes.

Behind them, she heard the sound of the door opening, and she knew that any chance she might have had was gone.

‘OK, Josh. That’s enough. I think we’ve seen what we needed to see.’

The man – Josh – loosened his grip, and she stared, baffled, at the figure standing in the doorway.

‘Not bad, sis. You did good.’

‘What the fuck, Hugh?’

Salter. Hugh fucking Salter. Grinning at the terror on her face and Josh’s testicular agonies. Not that she was wasting any sympathy on Josh, whoever the hell he might turn out to be. From the look on Josh’s face, the feeling was largely mutual.

‘Thought you’d got us sussed at first, sis. Thought you’d rumbled it was just a training exercise.’

‘I had. But your friend Josh there was just too convincing as a macho sexist bastard.’

‘Ah, well,’ Salter said. ‘He’s bloody good is our Josh. Mind you, he’ll need to keep his balls on ice for a few days. That’s quite a kick you’ve got there.’

Josh was still glaring at her. ‘Just fuck right off,’ he said. She assumed, perhaps over-charitably, that the words were aimed at Salter.

‘Bit of risk goes with the territory, mate,’ Salter said, still beaming. ‘Especially when you tangle with Marie Donovan, undercover officer.’

It was the closest Salter would ever come to acknowledging her success. But it was close enough for her.

‘What’s this all about, Hugh?’ she said.

‘Training exercise, like I say. Which you came through with flying colours. Sorry if Josh went a bit over the top, but we had to get to the point where you’d start to think it might be real. Up to that point – well, it was useful, because at least it showed us you could stay in character . . .’

‘Even at the crack of dawn after two days of just being myself?’

‘Quite so. And you did it well, but there was no real pressure. Not till Josh managed to get you questioning whether it might be real after all. Then we saw what you were made of. Josh in particular, I think.’

‘Christ, you don’t do things by halves, do you?’

‘Can’t afford to, sis. Look, this is what it’s going to be like. I mean, not like this – let’s hope not, anyway. But having to keep up the act even if you’re being challenged, even if you’re scared out of your wits. Having to improvise when things don’t go to plan. Having to remember which lies you’ve told and to whom.’

‘Jesus, Hugh, anyone suggested you get a job in sales?’

‘They like people who tell the truth, do they? But you’ll be all right, sis. If you can get through this lot, you’ll cope with anything the job can throw at you.’

‘I hope you’re right, Hugh. Because it doesn’t feel that way just at the moment.’

‘You did good, girl,’ Salter said again.

‘Well, thank you, Hugh.’ She turned and nodded to Josh. ‘And thank you, too, I suppose. You make a very convincing total bastard.’

She moved towards the door, wanting now just to be out of there, to be heading home. To be sleeping. The adrenaline had melted away, and she felt as exhausted as she had back at the airport. As she pulled open the door, she paused to look back at Salter.

‘In fact, you both do,’ she said. ‘You both make very convincing total bastards.’

Liam waved the bottle in her direction. ‘Want any more?’

‘No. You finish it. I’ve had enough.’ She drained the last dregs of the red wine, and climbed slowly to her feet. ‘I’m knackered,’ she said. ‘Think I’ll turn in.’

He poured the last of the wine into his own glass. ‘What time you off in the morning?’

‘Not too early. About eight, probably.’

‘We can have breakfast together before you go, then.’

‘If you’re up.’ She immediately regretted the response, which sounded more sarcastic than she’d intended.

‘I’ll be up,’ he said. ‘Want to see you before you go. One last time.’

‘It’s not forever, Liam. A month. Then I’m back.’

‘For a weekend. Then you’re off again. And so on. Maybe forever.’

She bit back her exasperation. ‘We’ve been through this, Liam. Dozens of times. It’s what I want to do. It’s a new challenge. It’s terrific experience.’

‘I know. I know it’s what you want. I’m not trying to stop you. I don’t have to like it, though.’

‘No, well, you’ve made it very clear that you don’t.’

‘You’ve said yourself, Marie. It’s risky. We’re having to live apart. You can’t expect me to like that. Or pretend to like it.’

She nodded. ‘OK. It’s not going to be easy. But we’ll get through it. They won’t let me stay out in the field for too long. No one does. A year. Eighteen months, max.’

‘Almost there already, then,’ he said. The tone was ironic, but he was smiling now at least.

‘Come to bed,’ she said. ‘It’s our last night. We ought to make it worthwhile.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Five minutes. I’ll just finish the wine.’

‘Don’t drink too much. I don’t want you incapable,’ she half-joked. ‘How are you feeling now, anyway?’

He shrugged. ‘Not so bad. Tired. Aching a bit. But I’ve been feeling better lately. Not so difficult walking.’

She looked at him, wondering what was going on in his mind. Whether he was really feeling better or just trying to make the best of things. Since he’d received the diagnosis, he’d become harder to read, more withdrawn. When she tried to talk about it, he just shrugged it off. There was nothing to say, he insisted. Maybe it would be all right, maybe it wouldn’t. All he could do was take each day as it came.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘But you don’t want me falling asleep on you.’

‘Certainly don’t.’ He raised the wine glass in her direction. ‘Here’s to you, Marie. Here’s to us. Here’s to the future.’

He sounded very slightly drunk, she thought. And there was no way to tell whether he was being sincere. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘To me. To us. To the future.’

Part Two Winter: Operational

Chapter 2

They’d thrown open the large picture windows and a chill wind was gusting off the canal through the apartment, but the stench of blood was unavoidable. The young officer, Hodder, stood hesitantly in the kitchen doorway, trying to catch Salter’s eye. He looked faintly bilious.

After a moment, Salter thumbed off the mobile phone and looked up. ‘All OK, son?’ There was only a few years’ difference in their ages, but Salter categorized most colleagues as ‘son’, ‘mate’ or ‘guv’, depending on their relative rank. He was a tall angular man, his head shaved, his eyes staring disapprovingly at the world through narrow steel-rimmed glasses.

‘Didn’t want to interrupt,’ Hodder said. He gestured towards the phone. ‘Your sister?’

Salter stared at him, uncomprehending, then laughed. ‘No, just my little joke. One of our esteemed colleagues, Marie Donovan.’

‘Don’t know her.’

‘You wouldn’t,’ Salter said. ‘Covert. Deep cover.’

Hodder shook his head. ‘Don’t know how they do it,’ he said. ‘Months on end. Leading a double life. Must drive you bananas.’

Salter smiled. ‘It does, son. Take it from one who knows.’

Hodder blinked, suspecting he’d made a gaffe. ‘No offence. Didn’t realize you’d done it.’

‘Years of it. And, yes, it can leave you pretty messed up.’ He gazed impassively back at Hodder, as if daring him to take the conversation further. ‘How are things through there?’

‘They’re nearly done with the crime scene stuff. Just finishing up.’

‘About bloody time,’ Salter said. ‘Sooner we can all get out of this place the better.’

‘It’s a mess in there,’ the young man said. ‘Though they’ve taken the body out now.’ His expression suggested that this was a relief.

‘Thank Christ for that. This is a nasty one.’ Salter peered quizzically around, as if his words might apply equally to the compact kitchen in which they were standing. ‘Will hit the resale value, too. That living room’ll need completely stripping back.’ He laughed mirthlessly. ‘No consideration, those buggers. Still, Morton won’t care any more.’

He straightened as the scene of crime officer poked his head around the door, his eyes blinking under his protective headgear. Like a bloody tortoise waking from hibernation, Salter thought.

‘All done, Hugh,’ he said. ‘Yours to mess up.’

‘Beyond even my talents to mess this place up any further, mate,’ Salter said. ‘Anyway, I leave the detecting to you people these days.’

‘I was told you lot had commandeered the place. Ordered us plods to keep our size elevens out till you’d done the serious stuff. Imagine that went down well with the boss. No skin off my nose either way.’

‘That right?’ Salter shrugged. ‘Nothing to do with me, mate. You know me, always happy to help out the local coppers.’

‘And up yours as well, former DI Salter,’ the other man said cheerily. ‘You deserve this fucking lot.’

‘No one deserves this lot,’ Salter said. ‘Not even me.’

He followed the SOCO back into the living room. The smell of blood had been strong in the kitchen. Here, despite the open windows, it was almost overwhelming.

‘Jesus.’ Salter looked around. There was a large congealing pool of blood in front of the white leather sofa, further smears and splatters around the walls, across the furniture. Everywhere. Another officer was crouched by the door, carefully packing away the remaining equipment. ‘What’ve you found?’

‘Plenty of DNA,’ the SOCO said. ‘Most of it’s the victim’s, though, and I imagine you already know who he is.’ There was an unmistakable undertone of irony.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll share the good news with you in due course, I’m sure. Anything else?’

‘Reckon there was a woman here, too. In the bed.’

‘You can tell that from the DNA already? That’s impressive.’ Salter was peering vaguely around the room, giving a convincing impression of disinterest.

‘No. Smell of perfume on the sheets. Unless your man was into Versace or whatever it is.’

‘Anything’s possible, mate.’ Salter looked up, as if he’d only just realized he was engaged in a dialogue. ‘A woman, eh? Lucky sod.’ He gazed back at the bloodstains on the sofa. ‘Well, not so lucky, I suppose. What do we think happened to her? Was she part of this?’

‘Like you say, Hugh, anything’s possible. Or maybe she’d buggered off before all this happened. Maybe he’d already got what he paid for.’

‘Jesus, you like to think the worst of people, don’t you?’

‘Goes with the territory.’ The SOCO was losing interest, recognizing that Salter had no intention of sharing any information. ‘Anyway, we’ve plenty of stuff, but it’ll take some work to sort it all out.’ He paused, before making one last effort. ‘Strikes me as a professional job.’

Salter was peering at the pool of blood. ‘Messy one if so,’ he said, non-committal.

‘That’s your trouble,’ the SOCO said. ‘Once you start talking, there’s no stopping you.’

Salter smiled and then raised his eyebrows as the shrill note of the front doorbell sounded through the flat. ‘Saved by the bell,’ he said. ‘Sounds like the big guns have arrived to take over from us minions.’ His tone suggested that he included himself in the last group only as a matter of courtesy.

The two SOCOs took the hint and picked up their cases. Salter followed them out into the hallway. Hodder was already opening the front door.

‘Gentlemen.’ The man on the doorstep was a squat, rumpled-looking figure, probably in his early fifties, his grey hair swept back in an ineffectual attempt to hide an increasing baldness. Despite his dishevelled appearance, he carried an air of confident authority.

‘Guv,’ Salter acknowledged. By contrast, his own brand of cocky superiority suddenly appeared slightly gauche.

The older man peered at the two SOCOs, his expression suggesting that, though he hadn’t met them before, he would remember them in future.

‘Keith Welsby,’ he said. He gestured towards Salter. ‘From the Agency, like my colleague here.’ Somehow he succeeded in conveying the relative seniority of his own role compared with Salter’s. ‘All done?’

The lead SOCO nodded. ‘On our side, sir.’

‘Thanks very much, then. We’ll be in touch in due course.’ He was still holding open the front door, and the tone of dismissal was unmistakable. The SOCOs needed no further prompting.

Welsby closed the front door behind them, and then turned slowly back to Salter and Hodder. ‘Right, lads,’ he said, his face expressionless. ‘So what the fucking fuck’s been going on here, then?’

Chapter 3

Her head aching, her mind still in some other place, Marie Donovan sat at her large wooden desk, trying to smile at the young man opposite. She hadn’t chosen the office furniture herself and it was all too imposing for her taste. Perched in the leather swivel chair, the young man looked like a mouse caught in a boxing glove.

‘It’s still not right, is it, Darren?’ she said at last, knowing that she had to go on with all this, despite everything. She glanced down again at the document. She was trying to find the right words. With Darren, she was always trying to find the right words. Simple ones, that he could follow.

‘Darren?’ she prompted.

He blinked. ‘Miss?’

‘It’s Marie,’ she said. ‘You can call me Marie.’ Christ, she thought, it’s as if he’s never left school. She imagined he’d been the same there – meek, compliant, fundamentally useless. ‘I was saying that we still haven’t got the printing right here, have we?’

‘I did my best, miss.’

‘Marie,’ she repeated. ‘I’m sure you did, Darren. But you need to concentrate. Let’s have a look at this, shall we?’ She held up the printed document. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

Darren gazed at the handful of sheets, a brief shadow of panic crossing his face in response to the direct question. He leaned forwards and squinted. ‘It’s a bit blurred,’ he offered finally.

She nodded. ‘It’s very blurred. You let the original move while it was printing. OK, what else?’

Darren looked dismayed that the inquisition was not yet finished. ‘Um. It’s a bit, well, wonky.’

‘It’s very wonky,’ she agreed. ‘You didn’t square up the originals. Anything else?’

He gazed silently at the document, then back up at her. The look of panic had returned. ‘Miss?’

She leaned forwards and picked up the paper again. ‘It’s printed on both sides of an A3 sheet, right?’ She paused. ‘A big sheet.’ She stretched it out to show him exactly what a big sheet looked like when it was stretched out. ‘And each side is divided into two halves?’

Darren was staring at her now with an expression of abject misery. She’d lost him at the first mention of paper size.

‘OK,’ she went on, ‘so it’s a big sheet that’s supposed to be folded in half to make a four-page A4 – that’s a littler sheet – booklet.’ She carefully folded the sheet to demonstrate. ‘Like that, see?’

Darren made no response. Knackered as she was, she was momentarily tempted to lean over the desk and give him a violent shake. She had a fear that she might actually hear what passed for a brain rattling around in his skull.

‘So that means,’ she persisted, ‘that both sides need to be printed the same way up. Right?’ She was determined not to be deflected now. ‘Otherwise some of the pages will be printed upside down. Right?’

A glimmer of light shone in Darren’s eyes. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘You don’t want pages to be upside down.’

She unfolded the sheet and spread it carefully in front of him. ‘OK,’ she said slowly, ‘so, now turn that sheet over and tell me what’s wrong with it.’

She had expected him to turn the sheet over left to right, or possibly right to left. Instead, he grasped the sheet carefully between his finger and thumb and turned it over top to bottom. He stared at the upright print in front of him, and then looked up at her, his eyes bright with welling tears. ‘I’m sorry, miss,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t see anything wrong with it.’

She could think of nothing to say. She peered over Darren’s shoulder through the glass partition that separated her office from the rest of the print room. Her assistant Joe was busily working at the large reprographic machine, his eyes determinedly fixed away from their direction.

‘Tell you what, Darren,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you speak to Joe? Get him to show you how it should be done.’

Darren nodded, his face brightening at the prospect of escape. ‘Thanks, miss. I will.’ He rose, almost falling over the chair in his eagerness to leave the office.

‘Marie,’ she said through gritted teeth, as the office door closed behind him. ‘It’s Marie. Fucking Marie.’

She shouldn’t drag it out. She should sack him now before it was too late, before he’d been working there long enough to have employment protection. She should sack him before she was tempted to kill him. She wasn’t a social worker. She was a businesswoman.

Except, of course, that she wasn’t. That was the whole trouble. She was only pretending to be a businesswoman. Doing a pretty good job of it, some would say, managing to expand the business in the face of a recession. But still only playing.

And if she was only playing, she might as well help out someone like Darren along the way. She knew Darren’s type from her early days as a policewoman. Disadvantaged. In Darren’s case, disadvantaged in virtually every possible way – socially, parentally, intellectually, physically. Without even the gumption to get himself into trouble. But that wouldn’t stop someone else getting him into it. Someone a bit smarter, more confident, more streetwise. Which narrowed it down to almost anyone else in the world. Someone would take advantage of Darren, exploit him for their own purposes, set him up, and leave him swinging gently in the wind when things went wrong.

Maybe she could delay all that by a year or two if she kept him employed here. The only risk was that she might end up murdering him herself in the meantime. Particularly on a day like today. After everything that had happened.

She was distracted by the buzz of her mobile phone on the desk. A text, apparently a routine domestic message: Running 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.