that it seemed well-maintained and lubricated. This was a space that had been used relatively recently.
Intrigued now, she returned the chair to the kitchen and made her way cautiously up the ladder until she was able to peer into the space above. At first sight, it looked unremarkable – just a small area of unused space below the pitch of the roof. Given the quality of the trapdoor, she had half-expected that the loft would have been adapted for regular use. But there was no real floor – just the usual joists with the plasterboard ceiling nailed beneath them. She would have to be careful. If she slipped off the joists, she would most likely just crash through the plasterboard.
She noticed that, although there was no floor, a number of doubled planks had been positioned across the joists to provide a safer route across the loft. Not just a temporary measure, either. The planks were neatly nailed into place.
There was some light up here – lines of sunlight creeping through gaps below the roofline – but it remained gloomy. She looked around and found a light switch. As she pressed it, the space was flooded with light from two large spots set in the corners of the roof. Again, she thought, not what you’d expect from your average loft. Looking around, she saw that, otherwise, her earlier expectations had been largely fulfilled. There were various items scattered about the attic, most of them nothing more than discarded junk. A rusting child’s tricycle, a discarded toaster, an old television. Beyond that, there were a number of cardboard shoe boxes filled with papers. She made her way carefully along the planks towards these, hoping that their contents might be of interest.
But they were simply more rubbish, sheet after sheet of old domestic bank statements, all at least ten years old. She scanned a handful briefly, but the name of the account holder meant nothing to her and the amounts in the account were small. She flicked quickly through the rest of the boxes, but the papers were of a similar type and vintage – old utilities bills, tax returns, bits and pieces of formal correspondence. All of it unremarkable, the kind of thing you might find in any household. Stored up here by some previous occupant in the hope that it might come in useful someday. It clearly never had.
She straightened up, careful to keep her balance on the narrow planks. There didn’t seem to be much else. This was another wild goose chase, of no value except to waste another half-hour of the endless morning. If nothing else, she’d enjoy Salter’s reaction to the mess she’d made of these new clothes in the small time he’d been out of the house.
There remained one interesting question, though. Why had someone installed that expensive-looking entrance and then taken the trouble to put the planks down? Her eyes followed the path of the planks across the attic. They led to an area at the far gable end, lost in the gloom. Her immediate guess was that the planks led to the house’s water tank, although she couldn’t see it in the dim light. Still, while she was here, there was no harm in looking.
As she drew closer, she realized that the arrangement was more professionally constructed than was at first apparent. The planks broadened to a reinforced platform. What she had taken to be the gable wall was a neatly made plasterboard screen, painted a dark colour so as to be invisible to anyone taking a casual look into the attic.
Examining the panelling more closely, she saw it was designed to slide back on stainless-steel runners set at ground level and head height. Like the loft entrance, the structure had been well maintained and drew back easily. She opened it to its full extent, and peered to see what lay behind.
At first, she was disappointed. Immediately behind the panel was a steel water tank, pipes leading off to the bungalow’s plumbing and central heating. She craned her head to look further around the panel. Behind the tank was something much more interesting.
It was a large industrial safe, a squat cast-iron monstrosity that lurked almost threateningly in the semi- darkness. The platform beneath it had been reinforced to ensure that it would take the weight. Christ knew how it had been brought up there. She could imagine only that it had been lifted by crane and brought in through the roof. Hardly an inconspicuous activity, although maybe the kind of thing you could disguise as part of a rebuilding or renovation exercise.
Why in God’s name was it here? Whatever else it might be, it clearly wasn’t a repository for superannuated utilities bills and bank statements. She climbed past the screen and examined the safe more closely. It was the kind of object you might find in a large retail store. Somewhere to keep the day’s cash takings.
She tried the handle, with no expectation that it would move. Sure enough, the safe was firmly locked, requiring both keys and a combination number to open. Not much else was likely to provide access, short of maybe a piledriver. So what was in there? It could be anything. Cash. Drugs. Arms. Perhaps all three. Certainly nothing that you’d expect to find in a domestic setting. Or, for that matter, in one of the Agency’s safe houses. Which raised the question of what this place really was. And what Salter was up to.
She spent a few more minutes searching the area around the safe for any clues to its contents, but found nothing. But then, her eyes now accustomed to the darkness, she noticed something else. There were wires running alongside the safe, just below the bottom of the roof. In itself, there was nothing remarkable about that. The attic space was strewn with domestic wiring, grey cables snaking across the plasterboard, tacked to the rafters, powering the ceiling lights and electrical points in the rooms below.
But this was different – lighter than domestic wiring, with the air of having been hastily installed. It trailed back to some sort of unit in the far corner. It took her a few moments to work out what she was seeing. Covert recording equipment. Voice activated. One of the Agency’s machines. So the question was even more pertinent.
What the fuck was Salter’s game?
She was on the point of making her way back towards the entrance to the attic, when she heard a sound from outside.
A car.
She stepped rapidly back along the planks, wondering whether she would have time to make her descent into the hallway before Salter came through the door. She would rather keep Salter in the dark about her discoveries up here. Though, looking down at her dust-covered clothes, she had to admit that this was probably an optimistic goal.
In any case, the question was academic. Already, she could hear a murmur of voices from outside the front of the house. Salter was not alone. Whatever his game might be, it was becoming more convoluted by the minute.
Moving quickly, she leaned down to pull up the ladder and drag the trapdoor back into place. She had expected that the weight might be too much for her, but the counter-weighted design was as easy to operate from above as from below. Even so, she was only just in time. As the trapdoor clicked into place, she heard the fumbling of a key in the front door below.
She quietly straightened up and looked around. On her way into the loft, she’d noticed a small pile of rusting tools left, presumably forgotten, just inside the entrance. She flicked through them and selected an old screwdriver, its shaft rusting, its handle thick with dried paint.
She laid herself carefully down along the length of the planking, her face close to the ceiling boards. Then, as silently as she could, she used the screwdriver to bore a small hole in the plasterboard. She worked away at it for a few moments until it was large enough for her to gain a clear view of the hallway below.
Salter himself entered first, still talking to someone behind him. He sounded nervous, she thought, his voice a little too high, words a little too fast. Well, she knew how he felt. She was already wondering about options for escape. Would it be feasible to break out through the roof itself, push through the tiles? It would still leave her with the problem of how to reach the ground, but that shouldn’t be impossible. Not ideal, but better than nothing, if it came to that.
As the second figure came into sight below, she caught her breath.
Kerridge. Jeff fucking Kerridge.
There was no question. She had seen that figure too often – the body running to fat, the greying slicked-back hair, the clothes slightly too expensive for the circles he usually mixed with.
So much for keeping her secure. So much for Professional Standards. So much for this sodding safe house. Her instinct had been right again. She’d walked straight into it. From frying pan to fucking fire, in one not-so-smart move.
Salter had snatched her from Boyle’s clutches just to hand her straight over to Kerridge. Now she understood why Salter had been pumping her about what evidence Morton might have against Kerridge. They knew – or
