She took a deep breath to steady her nerves and approached the reception. A young man in a neat suit looked up and smiled. ‘How can I help you, madam?’
She glanced at her watch. ‘I’m a little early, but I’ve got a reservation for tonight. Wondered if there was a chance of checking in so I could freshen up? Penny Walker.’
The man nodded. ‘I’ll just check for you, Ms Walker.’ He had a trace of an Eastern European accept, though his English seemed flawless. He tapped away rapidly on his keyboard, then frowned. ‘You did say Walker?’
‘Yes. Penny. Penelope.’
The man tapped again. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t seem to find it. It wouldn’t be under any other name?’
‘I booked it through the office. Suppose it could be in the company name.’ She gave him the name of a fictitious IT company.
He entered some more data, his frown growing more pronounced. ‘Doesn’t seem to be there,’ he said. ‘When did you make the booking?’
‘As I said, I didn’t.’ She allowed a touch of impatience to enter her voice. ‘It was done by my secretary, through the agency we use. Must have been a week or so back. You’re sure it’s not there?’
He was still tapping frantically. ‘No, I’ve tried variations on your name in case someone entered it wrongly. But there’s nothing similar. You’re sure it was for tonight?’
‘Well, I’m sure I asked for it for tonight,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time somebody’s cocked up, though.’ She fumbled in her handbag for one of the inoperative mobile phones. ‘Let me check.’
She thumbed the phone’s buttons as though accessing an address book and pressed the silent handset to her ear. She allowed a few seconds to pass, then said, ‘Gill, hi. It’s me, Penny. Yeah, fine. Just arrived at the hotel, though, and they can’t seem to find the reservation.’ She paused, as though listening. ‘Well, that’s what I thought. Have you got the confirmation?’ Another pause. ‘And it definitely says for tonight. Have you got the reservation code?’ She gestured silently to the hotel receptionist, who slid a pen and a notepad across to her. She scribbled out a set of numbers in the format used by the booking agency that she’d usually dealt with. ‘OK, I’ll try them with that. I’ll get back to you if I find myself out on the street.’ She laughed with an undertone that indicated she wasn’t entirely joking. She paused again, as though her imaginary interlocutor had continued the conversation. ‘No, no joy, I’m afraid. It’s turning into a perfect day so far. Reported it to the police, but I’m not holding my breath. Thanks, Gill. Call you later.’
Switching off the fictitious call, she turned back to the receptionist. ‘Well, it was definitely booked. My secretary has the confirmation.’ She pushed the scribbled code across the desk.
He drummed on the keyboard for a few more seconds, then said, ‘Ah.’
She caught her breath, wondering what he might have found, but realized that his frown had melted to a faint smile. His world was beginning to make sense again. ‘Can’t find that code exactly. But we’ve a Mr Welford booked through the same agency,’ he said. ‘Same initial. I bet the agency mixed up the two records. Happens all the time, I’m afraid.’ And it’s not our fault, was the unspoken subtext. He straightened, the smile fully operational again. ‘Luckily, we’re not full. We can fit you in and still find room for Mr Welford, assuming he’s actually expecting to stay here.’ He made it sound as if he’d taken control of a situation that would otherwise have spiralled dramatically out of control. ‘We don’t have any standard rooms available. But we can offer you an upgrade to one of our executive rooms. At no extra charge, of course, in the circumstances.’
She managed not to look too overwhelmed at this beneficence. ‘That’s very kind.’
He completed the various administrative niceties and then said, ‘If you could just let me have a swipe of your credit card?’
‘That’s my other problem,’ she said. ‘That’s what I was talking about to my secretary. My purse was snatched on the way up here. Some little bugger in the coffee bar at Euston. I put it down on the table for a minute, and he grabbed it and legged it before I could get near him.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. His regret sounded genuine enough, but it wasn’t clear whether it was directed towards her or himself.
‘It’s a pain in the backside, that’s all. Fortunately, there wasn’t much cash in there. But I’ve had to cancel all my cards, and then there was all the stuff like driving licence, membership cards. You name it. There must be some special circle of hell reserved for little toerags like him.’ She paused, warming to her theme. ‘And why does the bank need five working days to send you a replacement, that’s what I want to know.’
The receptionist was looking baleful again, the expression of one who’d successfully deflected one major calamity only to find another coming along immediately behind it.
‘I’m going to have this problem all week,’ she said. ‘So I went and got cash from the bank. Luckily I didn’t lose my passport so I could still prove who I was. Is it OK if I just pay upfront?’
‘Well, I know it seems a little untrusting—’
‘Don’t worry. I spend my professional life chasing up bad debt. It’s just business.’ She lifted up her handbag and pulled out a small selection of the cash. ‘Three nights,’ she said. ‘So that totals . . .?’
She allowed him to make the simple calculation, giving him the sense that he was taking control again. When she’d paid out the money, he said, ‘I’m afraid you’ll just have to pay for any extras as you go.’
‘Story of my life,’ she said. They were both smiling again now.
Upstairs, the door locked behind her, she ran a hot bath, feeling an intense relief as she lowered himself into the scalding water. It was hardly the point to relax, she knew. This was no more than a temporary respite.
Jesus, there was no point in worrying. She’d done what she could. However she’d played it, she’d be fretting about the consequences. She was in a mess and all she could do was try to find the best way out of it.
She was becoming conscious, for the first time, of how difficult it was to stay hidden, even in a large city. She’d spent much of her career working in surveillance, but hadn’t truly registered how all-pervasive it was. If she used her credit card, made a call, even just walked down the street, she was giving out clues about her location. They’d soon know, if they didn’t already, that she’d withdrawn cash from a bank in the city centre. With time, they might even trace CCTV footage of her walking the surrounding streets, maybe even to the hair salon or the taxi. For the moment, though, they wouldn’t know for sure whether she was still in the city, or whether she’d withdrawn the money to fund a move out of town.
Her biggest hope was that the local police wouldn’t be giving this the highest priority. Even if he’d managed to keep his record clean, the police would know that Jones was a small-time crook, a legman for the bigger boys. He wouldn’t be much missed, and certainly not by the police. They’d most likely assume that his murder was some bit of underworld business that wouldn’t merit much more than token resources.
She expected equally that, for the moment at least, Welsby and his bosses would want to keep this under wraps. They wouldn’t want the embarrassment of revealing that an under-cover officer had gone AWOL. Her guess was that they’d allow the local plods to keep thinking that she was of interest to the Agency as a target, not as one of their own. They might even put some pressure on the locals to back off.
With a bit of luck.
That depended on the motives of whoever was behind this. By now, she had no doubt that somebody was. And that somebody, one or two steps removed, would be Boyle and maybe Kerridge. They knew who she was. Maybe not the whole of her role, but enough. She’d been exposed. Perhaps it really had been Morton. It looked as if he’d known, or guessed, more about her than he’d let on. Perhaps that was why he’d embarked on a relationship with her in the first place. Not her winning personality and cute looks, after all.
More likely, though, it was whoever was leaking from inside the Agency. Undercover roles were kept confidential even within the team, so her role should have been known only to a handful. Welsby, Salter and a sprinkling of others, mostly at senior levels. But it was possible she’d been hung out to dry a long time before, that they’d been playing games with her for months. The thought wasn’t comforting.
If so, the set-up had been beautifully engineered. Once she was arrested – perhaps already – her credibility was gone. At best, the Agency would just suppress everything, maybe not even give her the chance to clear her name. She’d be sacked or paid off. Jones would be forgotten. The local police would be blamed for disrupting some unrevealed operation, and would write it off as another instance of the Agency’s high-handedness. And the case against Boyle would be quietly dropped.
At worst, they’d leave her twisting in the wind. She’d be cut off from Agency support, charged with murder. Maybe she’d be convicted, maybe she wouldn’t. But it wouldn’t be in anyone’s interest to help her. It might suit everyone for her to take the fall, tie up the loose ends of Jones’ death. She could protest, try to get her story heard, but she’d just be dismissed as another rogue copper.
