Trust No One (11 page)

Except that today she hadn't. The laptop sat closed on the desk. She walked forwards slowly and peered at it, trying to recall her actions that morning. She'd showered, eaten some toast in the kitchen, come in here to finish her coffee while watching the news headlines on TV. It was two days since Jake's death, and there'd still been no mention on the news, national or local. She'd collected some papers from the desk before leaving. Nothing unusual. She hadn't even looked at the laptop. She'd have noticed if it were closed, surely.

Crazy. Of course, she could easily have closed it without thinking, maybe last night, when she was tired, when she was still annoyed with Liam, when she'd had a couple of glasses of wine.

She looked more closely at the laptop, then, without touching anything, at the papers that surrounded it. Slowly, she moved across the room and looked carefully at the rows of books on the shelves behind the television. Crime thrillers, most of them, paperbacks thrust back on to the shelf in no particular order. Or, at least, in no order that would mean much to anyone other than Marie. They were, for the most part, in the order that she'd read them – sometimes scattergun, sometimes splurges of a single favoured author. She leaned forwards and ran her eyes across the spines.

She straightened and looked around, racking her brain. The rack of CDs. The cupboard against the far wall where she kept various personal documents and files – utility bills, bank statements, various domestic detritus.

In the end, she made her way carefully around the room, peering intently at the edges of the carpet, occasionally bending to touch the skirting board, running her nail carefully between the wood and the plaster.

Finally, she walked back into the hallway and returned to the front door. She crouched in front of it, her face inches from the entry mechanism. Her finger gently reached out and touched a mark on the wood.

‘Shit,' she said.

Chapter 10

She was back in the underground car park, away from the lift. Through the metal railings, she could taste the damp night air, hear the rustle of wind through the surrounding trees. The car park was half-full, rows of expensive-looking family saloons and the odd little sporty hatchback, like hers.

‘Shit, come on, Hugh.' He always took an age to answer the secure line, keeping her waiting on purpose since there was only ever one possible caller.

‘Sis?' He was fumbling with the phone. Somewhere in the background there was the thud of music, voices chattering. ‘You know what time it is?'

She didn't, in all honesty. She glanced at her watch, and realized she would be unsurprised by whatever it showed. It felt like hours since she'd left the office.

‘It's only eight fifteen, Hugh. Some of us are still working.'

‘You think I'm not?' He'd moved the phone away from his face and momentarily the music grew louder. ‘This is where the real work gets done. You know that.'

‘Yeah. Boys' work, Hugh.' She was in no mood for the usual badinage. ‘I've got a few problems, as it happens.'

‘What's the trouble, sis? Tell Uncle Hugh.' He sounded pissed, she thought. Not very, but enough. Though, knowing Salter, it could be just an act, another way of throwing her off guard.

‘Someone's broken into my flat, Hugh. Or at least it looks that way.'

‘Looks what way?' He sounded genuinely puzzled. Third or fourth pint, she thought. Chewing the fat with Welsby and his mates.

‘Professionals, Hugh. People who knew what they were doing.'

‘You sure, sis?' He sounded more sober suddenly.

‘Not absolutely, no. Professionals. That's the point.' She briefly recounted what had happened with the entry system, then with the laptop. And the other things she'd spotted.

‘It doesn't sound much. Sure you're not imagining things?'

‘No, Hugh, I'm not fucking sure. That's why I wanted to talk to you about it. Maybe I shouldn't have wasted my fucking time.'

‘All I'm trying to say is—'

‘Look, Hugh. We both know how this game is played. We both know there are people out there who can do this in their sleep. There are probably one or two of them in the pub with you right now. The only surprise is that I spotted anything at all.'

‘Assuming you have spotted something.'

‘Yes, Hugh,' she said patiently. ‘Assuming I have spotted anything. That's the thing with professionals, you see. They make it hard to be sure. Thought I'd made that point.'

‘So what do you think, then? Kerridge's people?'

‘Well, that's one possibility, isn't it?' she said. She allowed the silence to build, giving Salter time to contemplate the alternative.

‘You think it's us?' he said, when it was clear she wasn't going to continue.

‘You tell me, Hugh.'

‘Jesus, Marie. If it is, nobody's told me.'

He sounded sincere for once, if only because he'd actually used her bloody name.

‘But it's possible,' she prompted.

‘Anything's bloody possible,' he said. ‘What do you think, that we're checking up on you?'

‘Like you say, Hugh, anything's possible. You and Keith seemed to think that Morton might've had something he'd not shared. You also seemed to think that I might know something about it, Christ knows why. So no, I wouldn't put it past you to be doing some checking up on me.'

‘Not me, sis,' Salter said. ‘Not my style.'

Like hell it isn't
, she thought.
All you mean is that it's not you this time.

But she'd noted the first person singular. ‘What about Keith? You think it's his style?'

‘Can't see it. But it's a bit of a madhouse here at the moment, truth be told. I'm not sure what to think.'

‘Shit,' she said. ‘I must really be in trouble if I come running to you, mustn't I?'

‘It's what I'm here for, dear sister. Your buddy and mentor.'

‘Thanks for that, Hugh. I feel so much better.'

‘Hang on in there.'

She cut the call, feeling the cold of the windswept car park. Where had that got her? All she'd done was expose another sliver of vulnerability to Salter. And discovered that, yes, it was quite possible that it was her own lot who'd broken into the flat.

She walked over and stood by her car. Her instinct was to get in and drive. Just drive. Not to any particular destination. Certainly not home, if that's what it still was. Not to Liam.

It was the first time she'd consciously acknowledged that thought. There had been a time, not too long ago, when she would have seen Liam as her refuge. Whatever else might go wrong, she had known she could go back there.

And suddenly she didn't want to. Had she fallen out of love? Or was it even simpler than that? Was it just that, before too long, she might be the one doing the looking after? That Liam might turn out to be not a refuge, but a burden? Was she really that shallow?

Shallow, or just out of her depth. Miles out of her fucking depth.

There was a flash of angled light across the far wall of the car park. Headlights, turning into the entrance. Another resident returning after a night out or an overlong day at work.

She walked back over to the lift, not wanting to be caught down here on her own. The long drive could wait. One day – one day soon – she'd do just that. She'd get in the car and drive, keep driving, maybe through the Tunnel south into Europe, or maybe a ferry north. One day.

The lift doors opened and she stepped in. One day. But not today, and not tomorrow. Tomorrow she had an appointment to keep.

She slept badly. She'd downed the remaining Rioja across the evening, in the vain hope that it would help her relax. It hadn't, of course. She'd become increasingly anxious, unable to concentrate even on some inane reality show on TV. She'd spent a good half-hour, earlier in the evening, running through the supposed evidence of a break-in, more and more convinced now that she'd been mistaken after all. Before she'd phoned Salter, she'd felt certain that the books and CDs on her shelves had been reordered. But maybe she'd moved them herself. She remembered pulling some of the books out looking for one she'd offered to lend to Joe. Had she put them back in the same order? Probably. Maybe.

And the laptop? Was she really that much a creature of habit? Why had she been so sure?

The more she looked, the less certain she became. She'd thought that part of the carpet had been raised, but when she examined it again, she wondered whether it had just been poorly laid in the first place. She'd even thought that the skirting board had been prised from the wall in one place. Perhaps it had. But if so, it had been replaced very skilfully.

But that was the thing about these people, whether Kerridge's or her own. They were experts. They knew exactly how to come into a place like this, do what they had to do, and then leave without a trace. And that raised another question. If they were so skilled, why leave the front door unlocked? Because there was no way to enable the electronic lock again before leaving? Because they wanted to leave just one sign that they'd been, enough to stir her unease?

Or maybe because the lock was just faulty and the break-in had never taken place.

Sometime later, with the wine bottle nearly empty, she realized that she'd forgotten about the data stick. Bloody typical. Only a few hours earlier, it had been the one thing on her mind. Then, in a few minutes, all this had knocked it clear out of her head. And she was supposed to be a professional herself.

Pouring the last of the wine, she turned on the laptop. She'd checked it earlier for any signs of intrusion, but the computer was no more revealing than anything else she'd checked. The machine was highly secured, but in any case she kept nothing on there that might be of interest to any third party, legitimate or otherwise. As far as her inexpert eye could judge, there was no sign that anyone had attempted to access the machine. But she knew that her inexpert eye was incapable of judging very far.

She slipped the data stick into one of the USB ports and waited, her brain mildly fogged by the wine, to see what might be revealed. Almost immediately, she was disappointed. The data stick was password-protected, and she had no idea what password Jake might have chosen. She tried a few obvious ideas – Jake's and then her own middle name, the name of the street where Jake had lived – but with no success.

Why would Jake send her this unless he thought she had a reasonable chance of guessing the password? Which meant that the password must be something obvious. But the harder she thought, the foggier her mind became. More sensible to try again in the morning when she was fully sober.

The perfect end to the perfect evening. Jake had sent her something that might be of vital importance, and she was too stupid even to work out how to read it.

She slipped the data stick back into her purse, stuck it safely under her pillow, and went off to bed, accompanied by a pint glass of water, already steeling herself for the hangover she'd face in the morning.

It was only as she was getting into bed that she remembered that the front door was still unlocked.

It probably didn't matter. If someone had broken in earlier, the electronic lock hadn't prevented them. No one else was likely to turn up tonight. But she felt exposed enough already. She stumbled back into the living room, grabbed a wooden chair, and jammed it under the door handle. Not elegant, but probably a damn sight better at keeping out intruders than that electronic bollocks.

With the chair in place, she felt more secure, but as it turned out, that didn't help her sleep. At some point in the night she found herself awake, staring into the darkness, listening to the unceasing sounds of the night – the buzz of a car on the main road, a distant drunken singing, somewhere a faint sound of machinery.

That was it, she thought. One of her sources of unease. If it had been her own people who had broken in – if they had suspicions about her behaviour, or if they thought she was holding something back – they'd have done more than just search the flat.

It was what they did. They had people who were experts at that – breaking into houses, planting intercept devices, slipping away with no trace that they'd been there. It was why, almost instinctively, she'd made her call to Salter from out in the car park. Because now she had to work on the assumption that she might be under surveillance.

She lay in the darkness, dry-mouthed, already faintly hungover, thinking about the implications, wondering whether there really was a tape machine in here somewhere or maybe even cameras, sound or movement activated, slipping softly into action as she entered the flat, spoke on the phone. Tracking her every move around the apartment.

Well, more fool them, if so. Whoever they were, they wouldn't get much out of observing her flat, in either information or entertainment value. But the thought of being watched by some pervert, officially sanctioned or otherwise, didn't do much for her comfort. And already they could have watched her unthinkingly insert the data stick into her laptop. Instinctively, she rolled over in bed and felt under the pillow for her purse.

Jesus
, she thought,
I can't go on like this.

It felt as if she'd fallen asleep only minutes before the alarm woke her at seven. She felt like death, a dull ache at the back of her head, her mind still dulled by the aftereffects of the wine. In the last moments before she'd fallen asleep, her brain had been running repeatedly through possibilities for the data stick's password, the options growing increasingly surreal as sleep crept over her. There'd been a point, just before she lost consciousness, when she'd been sure she'd cracked it – the solution had sprung into her mind as clearly as if Jake had whispered it into her ear. But now, in the pale morning light, she had no idea what that brilliant insight might have been.

She dragged herself out of bed, showered, and rapidly downed two pints of water, a black coffee and half a slice of toast. Feeling at least marginally more human, she began to consider what to do next.

She knew now that she was going to keep the rendezvous with her mysterious caller. She'd harboured some vague idea that whatever was on the data stick might clarify things. But with that option now closed, at least for the moment, she felt she had to pursue every lead, however tenuous. The caller might turn out to be some irrelevant crazy, but there was no risk in meeting him in a public place.

She had little doubt where the caller had meant.
Place you and Jake used to go on Saturday mornings
. Every once in a while, they'd go at weekends for a coffee and breakfast in a café bar up on the edge of the Northern Quarter. Sometimes they met there, sometimes they'd already been together all night. The place was nothing special – one of half a dozen places selling Italian-style coffees and pastries where you could find a quiet corner to chat, read the papers, relax. They'd chosen it because it wasn't one of the chains and because, at that time in the morning, it was less busy than most, tucked away in a back street.

She felt uneasy going back there, anxious that the memories might prove too much. She knew she still hadn't fully come to grips with Jake's death. Perhaps this would bring it home, one way or another.

She grabbed her coat and car keys, remembering, as she saw the propped chair against the front door, that she still had to deal with the entry system. For the moment, there wasn't much she could do. As she waited for the lift, she called Kev the caretaker. He wasn't there, predictably enough, but she left a message on his voicemail. Sometime, maybe in the next six months or so, he'd get around to calling her back. Sometime beyond then, ideally within the next decade, he might organize a repair. In the meantime, she was just grateful that she had no possessions of any great value.