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.
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.
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.
It was a fine day, she realized, as she headed back into the city centre. She hadn’t been able to face opening the curtains in the flat, and the sudden glare of the sunshine surprised her. The first signs of spring, maybe, at long last. It was still early, but the traffic was already backing up on the main roads, endless streams of commuters heading into work. She was used to driving against the flow and was surprised by the weight of traffic. She was already running late.
She followed the inner ring road round past the arena and Victoria Station, the 1960s monolith of the CIS Tower on her right, before turning off towards the Arndale Centre car park. It was the easiest place to park at this time of the day, and still relatively empty as she drove in. She parked and made her way down the grimy concrete stairs into the upper floor of the shopping mall. Like the car park, the Centre was largely deserted, many of the shops not yet open.
She’d been conscious, driving into the car park, of another car following her up the ramps, twenty or thirty feet behind. She’d parked as soon as she reached a floor with plenty of space, and had assumed that the car behind her would do the same. Instead the driver had continued past.
She’d noted the car at the time, alert for any sign that she might be followed. A dark grey Mondeo, though the rear registration plate was too grimy for her to make out in the gloom of the car park.
Now, walking through the empty mall, a feeling of unease overtook her. She’d registered the car before it had followed her into the car park. It had been behind her for some distance, three or four cars behind on the ring road. Perhaps coincidence, perhaps not.
As she took the escalator down to the ground floor, she glanced back over her shoulder. The upper concourse was deserted, apart from a bored-looking security guard staring vacantly into the window of the Apple Store. Then,
