Читать книгу Trust No One - Alex Walters - Страница 14

Chapter 5

Marie was momentarily tempted to pull into one of the several unoccupied spaces reserved for disabled drivers, but decided against it. The last thing she needed was more guilt, let alone the risk of being clamped. Instead, she parked as close as she could to the entrance, and then sprinted across the car park, pulling her coat tight against the pounding rain. She reached the hotel with her head and upper body soaked, rain oozing coldly down her collar. Jesus, she thought, and all those bloody disabled spaces standing empty.

It was Liam she was thinking of really, of course. Liam who would be perfectly entitled to park in those spaces. Liam and his condition, and the unknown, unknowable prognosis. She had a superstitious half-belief, barely acknowledged even to herself, that if she didn’t tempt fate, everything might be all right. Whatever all right might turn out to mean.

She stood in the reception, dripping rainwater gently on to the thick pile carpet. It was the usual sort of place; an anonymous, soulless business hotel, suitably mid range, conveniently positioned minutes from the M60. There were a dozen or more such venues, scattered around the city centre and the suburbs, catering to sales executives, visiting middle managers, off-site business meetings. Comfortable enough, with all the right facilities, but nothing too flash. They rotated the meetings around the various hotels, trying to ensure that they didn’t become too familiar to the reception staff. It wasn’t difficult. Most were transient youngsters, generally from Eastern Europe, here to make a few bucks before moving on or returning home. If she came back to the same venue six months later, the faces would all have changed. No one would remember who she was, or why she’d been there before.

‘Ms Donovan,’ she said to the bored-looking receptionist. ‘Small meeting room.’ She gave the company name. The receptionist smiled momentarily in a manner that suggested that she had, at least, received some instruction in how to greet customers, and began to thumb listlessly through a card index. Finally, as if in testament to her own considerable efforts, she triumphantly held up Marie’s reservation. ‘Meeting room for three,’ she confirmed. ‘Coffee at nine thirty and eleven. No lunch.’ Her tone on the last words suggested disapproval of Marie’s parsimony.

She collected the card key and made her way to the first floor. A small meeting room in this kind of place meant, in effect, a semi-converted bedroom – a fold-up bed disguised as a wardrobe, an imported table and office chairs. Coffee with a plateful of overpriced biscuits. Branded writing pads and pens. A bottle of water refilled from the tap.

She walked to the window. A view of the rear car park, a retail park, a cluster of trees half-concealing the M60 busy with the morning traffic. Anytown, UK.

As far as Joe and Darren were concerned, she was out seeing a client. She’d cultivated a routine of visiting the major clients at their offices. It was good business – they appreciated the personal touch. And it gave her the freedom she needed to pursue this double life.

She supposed she was being accorded some kind of privilege here. Normal practice was that she maintained contact only with Salter. Salter was her liaison officer. Her buddy or minder, as he would say. They had a regular schedule of meetings, once a month in venues like this – to touch base, share information, chew the fat, make sure she wasn’t losing her marbles.

Salter was her sole conduit back to the Agency. When operations were compromised, it wasn’t usually because of smart counter-intelligence. It was generally because someone had screwed up or, even more likely, had been accidentally exposed – recognized as a face from way back, spotted somewhere they shouldn’t be. She’d already had the experience herself, eyeballed by the sister of some small-time villain she’d put away years ago. She’d seen the woman staring at her, trying to work out if it really was Marie, gearing herself up for an altercation. Marie had passed swiftly on, eyes fixed on some window display, disappearing into the crowd before the woman could collar her.

So they kept the risks to a minimum. That was why today was unexpected. It was scheduled as one of her routine liaison meetings with Salter. Last night she’d had a call from Salter, through the usual channels, to say that Welsby would be joining them. Salter had been his usual semi-cryptic, game-playing self, but she’d gathered that the purpose was to discuss Jake Morton.

She wondered whether she should worry about that. But there was no reason why anyone should know about her and Jake, and every reason why Welsby might want to talk to her about the case. Morton had been a key witness in their intended prosecution of Pete Boyle.

Boyle was a pretty big deal. Their real target was Jeff Kerridge, the most influential player in organized crime in these parts. But Kerridge tended to keep his hands clean, and Boyle was his representative on earth. If they could make a case stick against Boyle, they’d be one step closer to nailing Kerridge. They’d arrested Boyle just a couple of weeks earlier, having finally mustered enough evidence to persuade the Prosecution Service that it was worth a punt. They’d charged him with drug trafficking, but they had a range of other charges, from conspiracy to money laundering, waiting in the wings. She’d no idea what would happen now. They had a wealth of documentary evidence, most of it supplied by Morton, but they’d struggle to secure the prosecution without Morton’s own testimony to back it up.

There was a knock at the door. She glanced at her watch. She’d been early because she was supposedly the host. But Welsby and Salter were early, too. Welsby would be keen to get this over with, she supposed.

She pulled open the door. Salter had a beige raincoat wrapped around his skinny body and seemed his usual self – an unholy cross between Tigger and Eeyore. Welsby stood behind, conspicuously furtive in a battered anorak.

‘Hi, sis,’ Salter said. He peered round the room. ‘Nice place you’ve got here.’

‘Home from home,’ she said, gesturing for them to follow her in. ‘My flat’s a soulless shoebox as well. Hi, Keith.’

Welsby nodded. ‘Marie. Been a little while.’

She poured coffee and set the plate of biscuits between them, feeling the usual mild resentment that this role was, as always, allocated to her by default. Here, she was the notional host, but things would have been no different back at the office.

Still, she had some time for Keith Welsby – more than for Salter, at any rate. Salter was a smart-arse careerist, a former fast-track graduate now in his early thirties, probably not quite as bright or as capable as he imagined. Harmless enough, she thought, as long as you kept your distance, but his priority was always to protect his own backside. That didn’t make her feel comfortable. In this job, she had no choice but to trust him, even if her first instinct was to play her cards close to her chest.

Welsby was different. Old school, a couple of years off retirement. His attitudes were, by the standards of the Agency, essentially prehistoric, but much of that was an act. He said what people expected to hear from an overweight, florid-faced old flatfoot. But there were no flies on Keith Welsby, and not just because most of his suits looked as old as he did. He was difficult to fathom. His attitude to her was avuncular and patronizing, littered with half-jokes about the shortcomings of women officers. But then he’d throw in a remark that suggested real respect for her ability. After a while, as she found herself striving to justify his good opinion, she’d concluded that this was just Welsby’s distinctive approach to staff motivation.

They arranged themselves around the narrow table, Salter leaning forwards, apparently in charge. Welsby was stretched back, a little way from the table, his body language indicating that, despite his senior rank, this was not his show. Fair enough. She and Salter were the same job grade, but the convention was that the ‘buddy’ acted as supervisor for undercover officers. This would normally be a supervisory meeting, an opportunity for her to bounce issues or concerns off Salter and for Salter to check how she was doing.

‘How are things, sis?’

She gazed at him for a moment. ‘Fine, Hugh. So what’s this all about?

‘Morton, of course.’

Welsby leaned forwards in his chair. He was chewing gum, a substitute for his usual cigarettes. ‘You knew him well, Marie?’

She took a breath and shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t say well. He was part of Kerridge’s team. I know them all, more or less.’

‘You suggested him as an informant?’

‘I got to know him a bit. He’s . . .’ She stopped. ‘He was the most approachable of Kerridge’s bunch, so I used him as a route in. Worked pretty well, I thought.’ It was worth reminding them that she’d got closer to Kerridge’s circle than Salter or anyone else had managed. ‘He seemed disenchanted with Kerridge. With the whole lifestyle, I thought. That’s why I reckoned he might make a good target for us.’

You know all this, she thought. It’s all on file. There was a long and bureaucratic process to get an intelligence source authorized, and everyone covered their backsides.

‘You got it spot on,’ Welsby said. ‘Smart piece of work. We got a lot out of him. We’d have got more. We’d have brought down Boyle. Maybe even Kerridge eventually.’

She noted the past tense. ‘You think this has ballsed up the Boyle case?’

‘For the moment,’ Welsby said. ‘Can’t see the CPS progressing with it unless we pull something else out of the shit.’

‘Why we’re here,’ Salter said. ‘We’ve been digging around in the excrement. See what we can find.’

She felt, at least at first, a surge of relief. Her second response was anger – that, for them, Morton’s killing was simply an operational inconvenience.

‘I’m privileged to be part of the excrement, then,’ she said, keeping her voice steady. ‘How did this happen, anyway? Surely Morton’s security was top-level?’ Given the hints Salter had dropped, she wasn’t sure she wanted the full story. But Jake had given his life trying to help them nail Boyle and Kerridge. Whatever she might think or feel, she had an obligation to get involved.

Salter glanced at Welsby. ‘Someone messed up,’ he said. ‘We don’t know who or how – yet.’

‘Someone exposed him?’

‘Must have done. Either by accident or on purpose.’

‘No one would be that careless, surely.’

Welsby shifted back in his chair. ‘Easy to be careless, lass. One slip . . .’ His voice was toneless. Marie looked across at him, wondering whether some response was expected of her.

‘In any case,’ Salter said, ‘the alternative is worse.’

It occurred to her for the first time that there was a tension between the two men, things they weren’t saying. Someone had exposed Jake, and no one knew who. If someone was leaking intelligence, they were all potentially compromised. And no one was more vulnerable than she was.

‘So what happened?’ she said.

‘He had a visit,’ Welsby said quietly. His mouth moved rhythmically around the gum. ‘Middle of the night.’

‘Jesus.’ Marie pushed herself up from the table and strode over to the window, trying to repress the turmoil of emotion. More guilt. Loss. Fear. Above all, fear. She stood for a moment, staring at the half-empty car park, the blur of cars on the motorway, trying to find words that wouldn’t leave her exposed. ‘This was our one bloody chance,’ she said finally. ‘Our one chance to nail those bastards.’

‘It’s not over yet,’ Salter said. ‘Morton gave us a lot. Copies of paperwork, documents. Helped us get surveillance devices in there . . .’

She didn’t want to be reminded how courageous Morton must have been in those last weeks. She still didn’t know what had really motivated him. She’d known he wanted to cut his ties with Kerridge, but there seemed to be something stronger driving him.

They normally kept Chinese walls between informants and undercover operatives to minimize the risk of leakage, so she’d heard only secondhand reports. At first, they told her, he’d been like every other intelligence source, warily feeding out titbits, constantly suspicious, scared of his own shadow at each meeting with his handler. But once he’d learned the ropes, found out who to trust, his attitude had changed. He seemed to have a mission to bring down the world he’d been part of. With no prompting, he’d offered himself as a prosecution witness in any case that they might bring, and had reinforced the offer by producing file after file of incriminating material.

She knew from Salter that Morton’s behaviour had worried them at first. They thought he’d either lost the plot, or was playing some complicated double bluff. But after a while they’d concluded that he was serious. It could go on for only so long, but it gave them time to dig some real dirt. A month later, they arrested Pete Boyle, with Morton scheduled to be the key prosecution witness. Another day or two and they’d have taken him into witness protection. Another day or two. Just a question of getting the fucking paperwork in order.

She turned back from the window. ‘These visitors. What did they do?’

Salter hesitated. ‘They killed him. Eventually.’

‘Christ.’

‘What they did wasn’t nice,’ Salter said. ‘Punishment. Pour encourager les autres.’

‘As we used to say down the nick,’ Welsby said. ‘And we reckon they were trying to find out how much he’d told us.’ He sat, chewing silently for a moment. ‘And whether he knew anything he hadn’t told us yet.’

Marie sat down and took a sip of her coffee. Cold and bitter. Appropriate enough. ‘You think he did?’

‘He’d more or less told us so,’ Welsby said. ‘Stuff he wouldn’t hand over till nearer the trial.’ He paused. ‘He still didn’t trust us. Not entirely.’

‘Sounds like he was on the button,’ Marie said tartly. ‘As it turned out.’

Welsby leaned forwards and picked up one of the biscuits. He regarded it suspiciously, as if unsure of its provenance, then thrust it whole into his mouth. He chewed briefly before speaking, untroubled by the shower of crumbs across his shirt front.

‘True enough,’ he said. ‘Whoever got to Morton knew what they were up to right enough.’

‘You think Kerridge has someone on the inside?’

Welsby shrugged. ‘It’s possible. Or some poor bugger fell asleep at the wheel. Bastards like Kerridge hoover up every bit of intelligence out there, wherever it comes from.’ He made a play of swallowing the last of the biscuit, then reached for another.

Salter had risen from the table and was busy, in a halfhearted manner, exploring the interior of the room, pulling open drawers, flicking absently through the bowl of coffee and sugar sachets on the hospitality tray, peering into the built-in wardrobe. It wasn’t clear what, if anything, he was looking for. They all wanted to be out of this box-like room, Marie thought.

‘Poor bastard should have just told us everything,’ Salter muttered, his voice angry. ‘He’d have been safer that way.’

‘Not much,’ Marie pointed out. ‘But it would have made your life easier.’

‘Yeah. Inconsiderate bastard.’ He withdrew his head from the wardrobe. ‘So what did he do with it? The other stuff, I mean.’

‘You don’t think they got it?’ she said.

‘Depends,’ Salter said. ‘I mean, in his shoes, I’d have spilled everything I fucking knew. But I don’t know that Morton thought like that. What d’you reckon, sis?’

There was an edge to his voice, but she couldn’t interpret it. She picked up the coffee pot and slowly poured herself a second cup, giving herself time to think. She made a point, this time, of not offering coffee to the others.

‘Difficult for me to say,’ she said finally. ‘But you’re probably right. Whatever else he was, he was a stubborn bugger.’

That was true enough. It was one of the things that had attracted her to him. He said what he thought, stuck to his guns. Miles away from the usual sycophants around Kerridge. It was one of the reasons Kerridge rated Morton. Kerridge lapped up the attention from the yes-men, but was smart enough not to be taken in by it.

‘You knew him better than we did,’ Welsby said. ‘You knew what made him tick.’

Welsby’s face was as uncommunicative as ever, his mouth contorted as he strove to extract some crumb of biscuit from his teeth.

She had the sense that she was being probed, or perhaps tested. Was it because they had some suspicions about her relationship with Jake? Did they think that Jake had shared his evidence with her?

‘I only knew him in a work context, really,’ she said. ‘I saw him with Kerridge a few times. He didn’t back down easily, let’s put it that way.’

‘So if he had something, he’d have kept hold of it?’

‘Christ, how would I know?’ she said. ‘I never got the opportunity to see how he reacted to torture.’ She took a long sip of her tepid coffee, waiting to recover her composure. ‘Maybe. You’ve searched his place, presumably?’

‘Yeah,’ Salter said. ‘Pretty thoroughly. Best we could before the plods took over, anyway. If there’s anything there, it’s well hidden.’

‘Or it was found by whoever killed him.’

‘Or it was found by whoever killed him,’ Salter agreed. ‘Which brings us back to the same question.’

‘To which we don’t have an answer,’ she pointed out. ‘I don’t know what you’re expecting me to say.’ She could feel her emotions bubbling away and was having to concentrate on keeping control.

‘You knew him better than most, sis.’

Salter’s tone was studiedly neutral. She found herself losing patience with the game-playing.

‘I’m not your fucking sister, Hugh,’ she said quietly. ‘Sometimes I’m not even sure we’re the same fucking species.’ She leaned back in her chair, regarding him coolly. ‘What about Morton’s handler? He’d be closer to Morton than anyone. He must have some insights. What does he say?’

She realized almost immediately that she’d struck a chord. Salter exchanged a glance with Welsby, a shadow of shared unease in their eyes. She watched Salter.

‘Who was his handler?’

Salter shrugged. ‘Me. I took it on.’

That was interesting. Not exactly against the rules. Salter had operated as an intelligence handler before he’d moved into undercover work, so he had the skills and experience to do the job. But, given the risk of exposure, it was unusual for an intelligence source to be handled from within the under-cover team.

‘Why you, Hugh?’

Salter glanced again at Welsby and shrugged. ‘Sensitive one this, sis. We thought it best to keep it in the family. Keith’s idea.’

Welsby was rocking back in his chair, eyes fixed on the ceiling as if he had spotted something noteworthy up there.

‘You think there’s a mole, then, Keith? Is that it?’

His eyes switched back to her, his expression suggesting that he had momentarily forgotten where he was. ‘Some kind of zit, anyway,’ he said.

‘You think so, too, Hugh?’

‘We’ve had stuff leak out. Morton was just the latest and the worst.’ He paused. ‘What we don’t know is what else might have leaked. What else might be out there.’

‘Jesus, Hugh. I’m out there.’ The thought was frightening. There were always risks. But you had to start from the assumption that the foundations were secure. Now, suddenly, she didn’t know who to trust.

Salter shook his head. ‘You’re as safe as you can be, sis. It’s only a handful of people that know about your role. You know how it works.’

‘I know how it’s supposed to work. And I know how it was supposed to work with Morton. Doesn’t fill me with confidence.’

‘We can bring you back in,’ Welsby said. ‘If that’s what you want.’

She looked at him. He was still swinging back on his chair, the metal legs looking as if they might buckle under his weight. She’d always liked Keith. She respected him. But she knew the way his mind worked.

‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘If it looks as if I’ve been compromised – if you get a fucking inkling that I might be in trouble – then I want to know. But there’s no point jumping the gun.’

‘Good girl,’ Welsby said.

He sounded sincere, and she didn’t know whether she wanted to hug him or punch him.

‘If there is a mole,’ she said, ‘any clues as to who it might be?’

Salter shook his head. ‘Not enough to go on. Morton’s the only biggie. The rest could be accidental.’

‘We shouldn’t have accidents,’ she said. ‘Not in this game.’

Salter smiled wearily, as if he too had once shared this utopian view of life. ‘Yes, well, sis. We’re all human, aren’t we?’ He paused, his smile broadening as if they were sharing some private joke. ‘Even you.’