She pulled off the main road into the network of side streets that led to the apartment block and the entrance to its underground car park. It probably wasn’t where, given a choice, she’d have opted to live. She’d have preferred to be out of the city, maybe somewhere down in leafy Cheshire. But it was pleasant enough, she supposed, in its own way. The flat was spacious and nicely furnished. The block was located on the edge of the city centre, and she had a partial view of the higher landmarks – the new Hilton, the CIS Tower, almost compensating for the fact that most of her windows overlooked neighbouring apartments. And – above all, given her current frame of mind – the place felt secure, built for the kind of residents who had a little more money than had been usual in this part of the city.
She waved her electronic pass through the car window at the entrance barrier and drove into the car park. There was even a reserved space allocated to her flat, just a few yards from the lift. For someone in an advanced state of paranoia, the place was usefully reassuring.
She parked up, grabbed her handbag, locked the car and, with only a single glance over her shoulder at the brightly lit underground space, she pressed the call button on the lift.
As she watched the descending indicator lights, she felt the vibration of the phone in her pocket followed by the shrill buzz of Liam’s ringtone. This time, she calmly pulled the phone from her pocket. Not Liam – she assumed he’d time his call for some far less convenient moment – but the same number as before. She pressed the call button and held the phone to her ear.
‘Yes?’
She half-expected another silence. Instead, a voice said, in what sounded like a stage whisper, ‘You’re on your own now?’
Just what she needed. A perv. ‘Tell you what,’ she responded amiably, ‘why don’t you just go right off and fuck yourself?’
She was about to end the call when the voice said, ‘I’m calling about Jake.’
She paused, her finger resting on the button. ‘Who is this?’ She glanced back behind her at the deserted expanse of the car park, feeling suddenly uneasy. She had taken the opening question as some loser’s half-arsed attempt at intimidation. Now she recalled that the first call had been terminated at the moment that Joe had appeared unexpectedly by her car.
‘We need to talk,’ the voice said, still semi-whispering. ‘Tonight.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said, keeping her voice even.
There was another silence. ‘I was an associate of Jake’s. You don’t know me.’
‘So give me one good reason to trust you.’
‘Jake sent you something.’
She hesitated before replying. Too long, she thought. ‘Tell me who you are.’
‘We need to meet.’
‘If you’ve got something to tell me, just say it.’
‘Somewhere public, then. The place you used to go with Jake on Saturday mornings.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Nine thirty, tomorrow morning. I’ll know you.’
She opened her mouth to find some response, but the line was already dead. She thumbed back to the ‘last call’ number and pressed the send button. There was a moment’s silence, then the repeated mantra: ‘Call failed’ in her ear. She tried again with the same result. The number was unobtainable.
She could ask Salter to try to track down the number. But she knew already that it would not be registered, or would be registered to some party unconnected with her mysterious caller. A pirated SIM, discarded after use. That might mean something or not much. Jake had always mixed with people who put a high premium on being untraceable.
But this was someone with an interest in Jake. And who now, for whatever reason, seemed to have an interest in her. In her current state of mind, that was disturbing, though she couldn’t decide whether that made her more or less inclined to accept his invitation.
That decision could wait till the morning, she thought, as the lift doors opened. She entered, waved her entry card at the electronic sensor and then pressed the button for the third floor. As the lift rose, she glanced at the CCTV camera that stared unblinking above the doors.
The corridor was as silent as ever. There were three flats on the floor and all were occupied – she’d even met her neighbours once or twice, waiting for the lifts. But most of the time there was little sign of life. It was the kind of place that attracted bored businessmen, living away from home during the week, working late at the office for lack of anything better to do. Just like her. Maybe she should have responded more positively to the overweight man who’d made a halfhearted pass at her as they waited by the lift a few weeks back. Perhaps they had more in common than she’d thought.
She slid the entry pass into the slot in the door and waited for the click and green light that signalled the door was unlocked. But nothing happened. She cursed, and inserted the card again, wondering quite how this system was better than a simple key. Still nothing.
It wasn’t the first time. Usually, it was because she’d allowed the card to rest too close to her mobile phone, or so Kev the caretaker had told her. It was a pain in the backside, because the only option was to seek out Kev himself, who spent most of his time sitting around in his tiny flat, but was reliably elusive when actually needed. She swore again, louder this time and, in frustration, jammed hard down on the door handle, as if she might break in through brute force.
To her surprise, the handle dropped and the door opened.
She gently pushed back the door, her unease returning. She could see nothing unusual, no sign that anything had changed while she had been away. She paused, holding her breath, listening hard.
Nothing.
She stepped into the hall. Still nothing but the usual sounds of the flat – the flat click of the central heating thermostat followed by the distant rumble of the boiler firing up. The gentle rhythmic ticking of the warming radiators. The dripping tap that was waiting for a new washer.
She opened the first door on her left, her bedroom, and turned on the light. Empty, and as far as she could see, undisturbed. She moved quietly, opening each door in turn – the en-suite bathroom, the second bedroom, the small kitchen. No one and nothing.
Finally, she pushed open the door at the end of the hallway. The main living room. Empty, of course. She waited a moment before switching on the lamp, watching lights from the surrounding buildings, the distant glow of the city centre.
She wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep this up. It was one thing to walk this tightrope when things were under control. But nothing seemed under control now. Maybe she was losing the plot, but it was beginning to seem that nobody else had much idea now what the plot should be anyway.
She moved into the kitchen, her mind already fixed on the bottle of Rioja waiting for her.
Then she stopped and looked back into the living room, her finger frozen on the light switch.
She didn’t know at first what had caused her to hesitate. The room was apparently undisturbed. There was a sofa, two armchairs, a desk facing the window that she used when working at home. On the desk was a scattering of papers relating to the business, bits and pieces of office paraphernalia – stapler, hole punch – and her laptop.
Her laptop.
That was it. She always left her laptop open. Liam chided her about it, because it allowed the screen and the keyboard to become dusty. But it was a habit, just one of those things she always did.
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.
