surge of adrenaline.
In the middle of the day, the car park was deserted, only a few vehicles still remaining. She looked up at the grey concrete roof and spotted the cameras placed to give coverage across most of the parking area. She moved into a darker corner outside the range of the nearest camera, and carefully tore open the envelope. Inside was a single piece of paper, ripped from some reporter’s-style notebook. In the centre of the sheet was an apparently meaningless jumble of numbers and letters.
For a moment, she was disappointed. Without consciously realizing it, she had already begun to build expectations about the contents of the envelope – that it would open some new door, offer some fresh insight into the circumstances of Jake’s death.
It took her a moment to realize. It was the password, of course. She’d been wasting her time trying to come up with some word that might have had significance for Jake. He had done what the IT security-types always recommended and selected a strong password, nothing more than a random mix of characters. He had sent this and the data stick separately, one to the office, the other to her home, presumably on the basis that if either letter were intercepted, it would be worthless on its own. But he’d assumed that the two items would reach her at roughly the same time, and that she’d be smart enough to make the link.
She folded the paper carefully and clutched it in her hand, making sure that it was not visible to the cameras, as she made her way to the car.
Leaving the car park, she turned down on to the ring road then headed out to the M602. From time to time, she glanced in her rear-view mirror, wondering if she was being followed.
It was impossible to tell. The traffic was busy, and there was a steady stream of cars pulling on to the motorway behind her. The sun was low in her eyes, and it was difficult to concentrate on what might be behind her. When she reached the quieter M61, heading up north to join the M6, it might be easier to judge if anyone was sticking behind her.
A few miles further she reached the junction with the orbital M60, taking the northbound turning that took her across the East Lancs Road to join the M61. Soon she was out in the quieter Lancashire countryside, passing the Reebok Stadium and then the great sweep of Winter Hill ahead of her. There were a couple of cars close behind her, but she had no reason to assume there was anything sinister in their presence.
Nevertheless, when she reached Rivington Services, a mile or two further on, she pulled in, turning unexpectedly, earning a blast of the horn from the car immediately on her tail. She made her way into the car park, turned off the engine and watched other cars entering behind her. Some headed through to get fuel, others stopped. Businessmen making phone calls. Families stopping for a drink or a snack.
The adrenaline had worn off a little, and the tiredness was returning. She climbed out of the car, pulling her coat around her against the chill of the bright day, and retrieved her laptop from the boot. Slipping back into the driver’s seat, she fumbled in her handbag for the data stick. When requested, she entered the password scribbled on the piece of paper.
As the window opened on the screen, she glanced up, feeling suddenly exposed. She was parked towards the end of the car park, away from the service buildings, and there were no other cars close by. There was no sign that anyone was interested in her presence.
There were several dozen files on the data stick, all with uninformative coded names. Some were Word files, but most were PDFs, images or copies of e-mails. She opened one of the image files at random. A series of photographs of Kerridge, taken with a long-distance lens, standing in what looked like one of the city centre car parks. There were other figures, mostly Kerridge’s associates. But Marie recognized two other figures in the picture. Two Dutchmen – known players in money laundering. The Agency had been liaising with the Dutch police for a year or more about them. It was the usual story. The authorities on both sides of the North Sea knew exactly who they were and what they were up to. The difficulty was building a reliable case. So far, despite their surveillance efforts, they’d obtained nothing likely to stand up in court. Just as with Kerridge and Boyle.
The real trouble was money. These people operated 24/7, and did their business when other people were unlikely to be around. The cost of keeping tabs on them was enormous. Marie had seen major surveillance operations called off simply because the Agency’s overtime budget had been spent.
She skimmed through the photographs in the file. They all showed the same scene, probably taken over a period of half an hour or so, as the group of men had talked, smoked, milled around. At one point, one of the Dutchmen appeared to be handing over a package to Kerridge. Probably nothing significant, she thought. These people wouldn’t risk soiling their hands with actual merchandise. This would be a set-up meeting, agreeing the terms of the deal and the logistics of the delivery.
The photographs were hardly conclusive evidence, but they were important, showing a link between two sets of operators which the authorities had suspected, but had so far been unable to prove. They’d enable the investigators to draw another line between the countless dots that might one day produce a solid picture. A small step, but they were all small steps and every one constituted progress.
She closed the file and opened another. More pictures, this time showing Kerridge sitting in the sunshine outside an attractive-looking country pub. She recognized none of the figures other than Kerridge himself, but they would be familiar to some of her colleagues. More dots being joined.
She worked through several more files. There were copies of e-mail exchanges, some from Kerridge, some from other names she recognized, some that meant nothing to her. Again, nothing directly incriminating. But there was enough to help progress a case against Kerridge.
Much of it would be inadmissible as evidence given its uncertain provenance. But it was better than anything else they had, and would open other channels of enquiry. Shapes and details that made no sense in isolation would gain significance as part of a wider narrative.
Christ knew how Jake had pieced all this stuff together. At first, she’d assumed that Jake had turned informant just because he’d had enough, that he wanted out. But she knew from experience that most informants just go through the motions. They give up what they know, but don’t go out of their way to dig more. Why would they? You don’t expect them to take more risks than necessary. It was one of the key skills of the handler, to put enough pressure on the sources to come up with the goods without pushing them too far.
But she’d sensed that Jake was different. The more he’d talked, during their time together, the more she’d felt that something was driving him. Something more than just weariness at the lifestyle, dislike of his associates. He wanted to do something proactive. To bring down the house of cards.
She couldn’t imagine how much risk had been involved. She didn’t even know whether Jake had acted alone. But it was an extraordinary collection of material. He’d gone to the limits in exploiting his proximity to Kerridge and Boyle – copying documents, taking photographs, scanning material.
She opened a third file – more images. Photographs of documents taken with a digital camera or mobile phone. Slightly blurred in some cases, as if taken in a hurry. She squinted at the screen, trying to work out what she was looking at. Some were tickets. Ferry tickets for the Hull–Zeebrugge line. It was impossible to make out the details, but she suspected that the tickets were for trips made by Kerridge or one of his associates, probably under some assumed name. If the image were enhanced, it could help identify the alternative identities that Kerridge’s people used for their overseas liaisons. They’d picked up one or two through surveillance, but the interaction with Kerridge’s people was more frequent than anything they’d picked up so far.
There were more copies of tickets, and copies of invoices from transport and courier companies. They’d suspected, but been unable to prove, that Kerridge was involved in carousel fraud, a VAT scam involving the transfer of real or notional goods between different tax regimes. If they could track down the supposed transfers, they might start to disentangle the network of shadow companies involved.
Further into the file, she came across a series of images taken from passports. An ID photograph she recognized as Kerridge, though his hair looked darker in the picture, as if dyed. The passport was in the name of Stuart Larson. There were more photographs of passports, some with images that she recognized. A driving licence with Kerridge’s photograph, again in the name Stuart Larson. Two more passports with Kerridge’s image and different names.
She flicked randomly through a few more files, convinced now that the material was dynamite. The key question was whether anyone, on either side, knew quite how much Jake had taken.
She suspected not. If anyone really knew what was on this data stick, they’d be making more serious efforts to recover it. Her impression was that everyone – Boyle, Kerridge, Welsby, Salter, Uncle fucking Tom Cobleigh and all – suspected that Jake had taken more than he was letting on, but no one knew what. The interesting thing was
